


Jaws - torchwood style

by AwatereJones



Series: Torchwwod Style Movie re-writes [4]
Category: Jaws (Movies), Torchwood
Genre: Horror, M/M, Violence, sharky goes num num, yeah ... wee bit of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:49:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4418234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwatereJones/pseuds/AwatereJones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jus realised I didn't share this one I did a while ago ... so dum dah dah dum ....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chap 1

It is a pleasant, moonlit, windless night in mid-June. We see a long straight stretch of white beach. Behind the low dunes are the dark shapes of large expensive houses. We hear a number of voices singing.

Around a blazing bonfire, a group of young men and women are drunkenly singing. Two young people break away from the others. They are Andy Davison and Mary Andrea. Behind them, there is considerable necking activity; Andy and Mary are more serious.

He fumbles with her knickers, plunging fingers inside her while still full clothed. She cries out and writhes beneath him, pulling at his clothes. With his flies undone, his erection peeks from his jeans and he enters her eagerly. As they fuck in the sand she grips his hair as he snarls through his release. Far too soon but she knows he'll be longer next time. Suddenly she feels the sand and she clambers to her feet, kicking off her knickers into his face.

Andy makes an awkward attempt at catching Mary, grasping her from behind. She squirms playfully out of his grasp.

"Hey! Hey, hey! I'm with you, right?" Andy slurs as he stumbles drunkenly after her.

They are separated from the others, silhouetted against the fire, she pauses and looks at the ocean, he is plodding along in the sand.

She runs down the dune towards the water, leaving Andy gasping at the top of the dune. As she runs, she is moulting her clothes. Andy is trying to follow her by her clothes, like Hansel following bread crumbs through the woods. But Mary is way ahead of him.

"C'mon!" Mary laughs as she runs headlong into the sea, plunges into the water with a light cry as the cold water sweeps over her.

Then we see a gentle swell in the water, a ripple that passes her a dozen feet away. A pressure wave lifts her up, then eases her down again, like a smooth, sudden swell.

"Andy? Don't dunk me ya twat ..." she warns as she looks around for him, finds him still on the beach, his feet twisted in his pants, which have fallen around his ankles. She starts to swim back in to him.

The water-bulge is racing towards her. The first bump jolts her upright, out of the water to her waist. She reaches under water to touch her leg. Whatever she feels makes her open her mouth to scream, but she is knocked again, hard, whipped into an arc of about eight feet, up and down, ducking her down to her open mouth, choking off any scream she might try to make. Another jolt to her body, driving her under so that only her hair swirls on the surface. Then it too is sucked below in a final and terrible jerking motion.

In his undies, laughing to himself, Andy is turning in slow stoned circles, held prisoner by his windbreaker which seems to have him like a straightjacket, as he struggles to free his arm from a tight sleeve. As he turns, we hear the singing in the background, from the fire.

Finally he falling into the sand and lays there laughing at himself as he repeats his promise to come to the breeze.

**.**

**.**

**.**

.

A beam of morning sun filters through the crack between the bottom of the curtain and the windowsill, falling across the top of the sleeping couple on the bed. It catches Jack Harkness right across the eyes, bringing him up from sleep. The job is completed by the clock radio, which clicks on with local fisherman's report and weather.

Ianto Jones burrows his head under the deep red covers, avoiding morning for a few precious minutes more. Jack slips under the covers and finds the morning wakeup call has woken at least one part of Ianto, taking his morning woodie into his mouth. As Ianto whines and flails, Jack finger fucks him.

Still wet and slick from last night's coupling, Jack enters Ianto easily. As they wake each other with heady moans and panting breath Jack is overcome with love for this lovely man who not only left his native country to follow him here but also accept two small hellion children from Jack's failed marriage into his life. All from one week in Wales to give a speech to the Heddlu about the Stun Guns he had designed. He came away with a contract and a husband.

Now this dream job came up where he could raise his kids in a real community while Ianto would graciously give up his passion for the sea and try to write that novel he had been chewing over for years.

"How come the sun didn't used to shine in here?" Jack whines to his partner.

"Because when we bought the house it was autumn. This is summer." Ianto mumbles from the pillow as he settles back into the bed.

Jack climbs out of bed, wearing socks, and nothing else, "Right."

"Do you see the kids?" Ianto asks as he yawns and stretches ogling Jack.

"Probably out in the back yard." Jack grins as he scratches himself.

"In Amity, you say 'Yahd.'"Ianto snarks and Jack grins.

"The kids are in the yahd, playing near the cah. How's that sound?" Jack responds, pulling at Ianto's foot.

"Like you're as far from home as me" Ianto sighs as he misses Wales.

"Give me 30 years, I'll get it." Jack climbs back into bed and proceeds to show Ianto how at home he can be.

.

.

.

Ianto enters the kitchen and goes to make coffee, starts to fill a kettle to boil water, the cold water rushes through and out the burnt-out bottom of the kettle.

"Did you burn another kettle? You know you're a fire hazard? This is the third one!" Ianto yells as Jack emerges, drying his hair from the shower.

"I never hear the whistle." Jack shrugs as he steals a kiss.

Before Ianto can answer, Miller, his oldest boy, enters, holding his hand. There is bright new blood on it, but he is not worried. It's a normal childhood scrape.

"Cut my hand. Bit by a vampire." Miller snarls pretending to wipe the blood on Jack.

"On the swing? I told you not to play near there until I sanded it down." Jack growls then turns to Ianto and points to the blood smear in his trousers, "See what your son did?"

"Go upstairs and bring Taddy a Band-Aid." Ianto rolls his eyes as Miller stomps upstairs.

The boys had decided Ianto was theirs and Jack could share him if he was good, the love between them instant. Jack was blessed and knew it as his gorgeous husband adored the children as if he had carried them himself. _God, just don't ever call him the wife!_

Ianto fumbles in his dressing gown pocket and produces Jack's new glasses, which he holds out to him. "Don't forget these."

"Oh, yeah." Jack sighs as he puts them in "How do I look? Older, huh?"

"I think they make you look sexy." Ianto wiggles his eyebrows and Jack laughs, bending to kiss him lightly.

Then more seriously Jack asks, "Sexy, huh? What was I before?"

"Older, sillier." Ianto ponders the question, "Blind!"

Jack looks out the window to the view beyond, CJ, the younger child, is happily cavorting in the summer air, enjoying the very air he breathes.

The phone rings and Jac kanswers one of two phones on the wall.

"Harkness... yeah, what's up... mmm ... Well, what do they usually do, float or wash up? Really? ... okay, I'll at the beach in," Jack checks his watch then speaks again, "...20 minutes, okay? Okay."

"First goddamn weekend of the summer." Jack spits as he slams down the phone.

Miller re-enters in bathing togs, with a towel on his shoulder, his hand washed, holding a Band-Aid ready for Ianto who takes it, and bandages the finger with care and affection.

"There." Ianto declares as he kisses his son's hand then turns to address Jack "What was that?"

"The office." Jack groans as the door slams, announcing Miller's exit.

Ianto brushes his hand over Jack's badge as he flicks of imaginary fluff, "Be careful."

"Here? You gotta be kidding" Jack gives him a soft kiss, starts to go, with his cup. "Love ya Tiger."

"Hey Captain. Bring my cup back." Ianto murmurs as he leans in to steal another kiss.

At the door, Jack takes a windbreaker off a hook and you can see the Amity Police shoulder patch as he goes to an SUV parked outside.

Jack's SUV roars past an enormous billboard depicting a typical summer day in Amity. A beautiful model splashes in the gold surf, languishing in a glowing sun. AMITY WELCOMES YOU is written above her flailing arms.

Three small figures are walking the beach. The sea is rough and there is flotsam and jetsam strewn about from the receding tide.

Deputy Gwen Cooper is searching the shore about one hundred yards down wind. Meanwhile, Jack, in his casual police attire, and Andy, still in the clothes from last night, walk down the beach. Jack carries the missing girl's shoes, purse and clothes. In the daylight, Andy shows his nerves, wavering between maturity and tear-blown adolescence.

"Mary what?" Jack tries to understand the relationship between the two young lovers.

"Andrea. - No one ever died on me before." Andy whines.

"You picked her up on the ferry." Jack reads his notes.

"I didn't know her." Andy shrugs.

"And nobody else saw her in the water?" Jack frowns as he checks the number of people on the beach according to his notes.

"Somebody could've" Andy concedes as he rubs the back of his neck nervously "I was sort of … well, passed out."

"Think she might've run out on you?" Jack stops walking to watch the boy's reaction.

"Oh, no, sir. I've never had a woman do that. I'm sure she drowned." Andy replies with wide eyes that show he never even considered that option.

"You from around here?" Jack starts walking about and Andy tries to keep up.

"No. Cambridge. Harvard. My family's in Tuxedo, New York, though."

"You here for the summer?" Jack looks over the waves.

Andy waves his hand up the beach, towards beach houses, "Some friends and me took a house."

"What do you pay for a place just for the summer?" Jack is interested and turns to face the boy.

"A thousand apiece, something like that. There's five of us. And we each kick in a hundred a week for beer and cleaning, stuff like that." Andy says with a grin.

"Pretty stiff." Jack sniffs as he mentally works out the numbers.

A shrill whistle makes them turn. Gwen is fifty yards away, on her knees. She blows again, a half arsed report this time.

"Maybe that's your girl." Jack shouts as he breaks into the run, followed by Andy with a nervous grimace.

A coil of seaweed lays at the base of this isolated dune. The booming waves and hissing surf make it hard to hear but Gwen is on hands and knees, looking white as a sheet pointing back at the dune.

Jack tells Andy to wait at the foot of the dune, and climbs up. Gwen stops him with a wave-off, saying something at the same time as a mouth full of spew erupts. Jack nods understandingly and steps up carefully, looking down. He adjusts his glasses, trying to make sense of what he is looking at.

Whatever he sees has a marked effect on his entire body.

Kicking out with his foot, Jack sends dozens of angry crabs into an escape frenzy and they boil over the top of the dune and down its slopes.

Andy takes a few nervous steps backwards when Jack waves him over. He shakes his head. Jack glares and waits silently. Then Andy shuffles forward the few remaining feet, his eyes looking everywhere but down. Jack says something else lost in the sound of the pounding surf and Andy shakes his head again, eyes out at sea. Jack puts his arm gently around the trembling man's shoulder.

Nodding, he starts to look down, an inch at a time. He looks. He, too, can't make out what it is at first. Then he recognises what he is looking at.

The jolt that assaults Andy is not unexpected. He falls backward in a sitting position as though shot. Nods _yes it's her_. Jack turns and slides off the dune, stumbling close. Hears his own breathing in is ears as his blood boils.

He looks around, SHIT!

 

 

 

Chap 2

Jack walks through the door and enters his office, holding a fizzing glass of Alka-Seltzer. Francine, his sixty-one year old secretary follows close on his heels with her shorthand pad of messages and reminders.

In the outer office, Gwen and Andy slump into chairs, sipping from cups.

Jack dips into file drawers for the appropriate forms. He gently turns on Francine, who is behind him.

"If this is going to work, you've got to keep current stuff out here, and put 'closed' files in there. The 'Pending' stay on my desk, okay?

Jack slips behind his typewriter, putting paper in the machine with the graceful ease of years of practice. He's obviously no stranger to paperwork. He touch types, hardly ever looking down, checking his notes and listening with one ear to Francine.

He is affected by what he's seen, but there's work to be done.

"This is in no order of importance, Chief" Francine is saying, "There's a meeting on the Amity Town Council on Aging this Monday night, Bentoncourt Hall. The Fire Inspector wants you to go over the fireworks site with him before he catches the one o'clock ferry. Mainly, you have a batch of calls about that new Karate school."

Jack has just typed the girl's name. He skips the space for Cause-of-Death, and just under it types the Next-of-Kin information he has collected from her wallet.

"Searle's Rent-a-Bike, the Rainy Ale, Tisberry's Hardware..." Francine lists other complaints, "they say it's those nine-year-olds from the school practicing karate on all those nice picket fences."Francine demonstrates a karate chop that is lost on Jack who scratches his head as the phone rings and she picks it up.

"It's the Coroner. Somebody pass away in the night?" Francine waves the phone at Jack who grunts and grabs the phone.

He nestles the phone between ear and shoulder, listening, as he turns to the typewriter.

"Jesus, Doc."

Cause-of-Death line rolls into place on the typewriter. The hammers punch out: **SHARK ATTACK.**

Jack leans forward, staring at what he just wrote. Francine cocks her head and takes the phone from him.

"What's the matter?" she demands noticing his worry.

Jack takes a breath. "Frannie, I want to know what water recreation is on for today."

"Right this minute?" Francine smiles then frowns as he nods.

Jack gets up and moves hastily toward the door. In the outer office Andy and Gwen look up as Jack enters.

Where'd you hide the 'Beach Closed' signs?" Jack asks Gwen.

"We never had any. What's the problem?" she follows him as he moves through the room.

A local merchant comes through the door. **"** Glad I caught you. There's a city truck with New Hampshire plates parked right in front of my..."

Jack pushes past him and out the door.

In the busy centre of a town preparing for the big Fourth of July weekend, Jack goes around sidewalk activity, purpose and haste in each stride. As he turns a corner a skinny man in a white smock over a purple suit emerges from the Funeral Parlour.

This is Doc, Amity's part-time coroner. Doc looks both ways before crossing Colonial Drive.

Jack passes a Bicycle Rental, navigating an awkward course through an odd assortment of Schwinn's that line the sidewalk in front of a demolished white picket fence. Doc intercepts Jack on the run.

"Wait-a-minute." Doc examines Jack with a frown, "Glasses, right?"

Jack nods yes, and starts to move away, but Doc holds on to him.

"Look at those fences! Little guys about eight to ten years old. And look at this!" He holds up a bicycle. The bicycle's spokes are bent and broken from some sort of attack. "They did that with their bare hands. The little shits!"

"Call me later in the day, okay, John?" Jack called over his shoulder as he keeps moving.

The Hardware store proprietor is busy at work on an inventory list with a mainland delivery man.

"Stuff's no good to me in August when the Pilgrims come in June..." Eugene was saying and he nods to Jack as he recognises the Chief, "Go on and help yourself to whatever you need, Chief. Can you work the register?"

Jack emerges with enough poster-board, wooden stakes, nails, paint, and brushes to close every beach on the island. He starts back the way he came when Gwen shoots up the street in the patrol jeep. She stops fast enough to call attention, leans out the window.

"Fran told me to tell you there's a scout troop in Avril Bay doing the 5 mile swim for their Merit Badges. I couldn't call them in, there's no phone out there." She shouts as he walks over.

"Get out of there" Jack orders her as he places the signage material in the back of the jeep, "take these back to the office and make up some 'Beach Closed' signs, and let Frannie do the printing."

"What's the matter with my printing?" Gwen demands and as Jack walks away her repeats the order to let Frannie do it.

Yvonne Hartman, the Mayor of Amity, is exchanging concerns with Ben Meadows and Doc and two other city Selectmen. They come out in a group, reach the sunlight, and squint down the street as Jack careens around the corner and out of sight. Deputy Cooper, laden with her arts and crafts, passes them on the street front.

"What have you got there, Gwenny?" Yvonne calls out.

"We had a shark attack at South Chop this morning, Mayor. Fatal. Gotta batten down the beach." Gwen barks as she hurries to comply.

Yvonne and group exchange horrified looks, but we get the impression it is not in response to the shark-attack news.

"Who've you told this to, Gwenny?" Yvonne asks enjoying her cringe at the nick-name.

"I just found out about it" Gwen informs the mayor "but there's a bunch of Boy Scouts in the water a couple of miles down the coast from where we found the girl. Avril Bay, thereabouts. Chief went to dry them off."

.

.

.

A flotilla of twenty exhausted Boy Scouts round a buoy that marks the official course. A rowboat with Scoutmaster using a bullhorn keeps pace, and urges the boys on.

Two older Sea scouts look on with stop watches and clipboards, while some Parents shade their eyes from the sun, watching their children. Jack pulls up in the Amity Police jeep, and starts toward the people. Behind him, Yvonne's Cadillac pulls up and skids to a stop. In it are Yvonne, Meadows, the Doctor, maybe a Selectman, and Gwen with her arms still full of sign material. Yvonne intercepts Jack, the others circle around him, effectively slowing his progress through the sand to the scouts.

"Jack!" Yvonne barks as she catches up with him, "Are you going to shut down the beach on your own authority?"

"Do I need any more authority?" Jack snorts as he tries to get around them.

"Technically, you need the instruction of a civic ordinance, or a special meeting of the town selectmen..." Yvonne smiles without it going all the way to her eyes "That's just going by the book. We're just a little anxious that you're rushing into something serious here. This is your first summer."

"Now tell me something I don't know." Jack huffs.

"All I'm saying is that Amity is a summer town" Yvonne tries to sound contrite "we need summer dollars, and if they can't swim here, they'll use the beaches at Cape Cod, or Long Island."

"So we should set out a smorgasbord?" Jack snarls as he realises he is getting shut down.

"We're not even sure what it was." Doc simpers as Yvonne pokes him.

"What else could've done that?" Jack demands and Yvonne turns to the Doc.

"Boat propeller?" she offers.

I think, possibly... sure. A boating accident." The Doctor nods.

"Some weekend tramp accidentally goes swimming too far, she's a little drunk, a fishing boat comes along" Yvonne mimes a propeller turning.

"Remember when Fred Ganz went scalloping in his BVD's? He was going to swim to New Bedford, he said." Eugene asks the group and they all laugh at the memory.

"Doctor, you're the one who told me what it was!" Jack says with incredulity.

"I was wrong. We'll have to amend the report."

"We never had that kind of trouble here." Eugene adds.

Yvonne faces Jack, "I don't think you can appreciate the gut reaction people have to these things."

"I was only reacting to what I was told." The Doctor simpered.

Jack looks out to the water where the scouts are rounding another buoy on the home stretch.

"It's all psychological, anyway. You yell 'Barracuda' and everyone says 'huh'. You yell 'Shark' and we've got a panic on our hands. I think we all agree we don't need a panic this close to the 4th of July." Yvonne says indicating the beach where the Scouts are flopping out onto the sand, exhausted, glad to be finished.

"I can't work in a vacuum. Why don't you make Gwen Chief? Her family's been here since the Puritans" Jack throws up his hands "half this island are her cousins."

"Jack, we hired the best man we could find." Yvonne says as the others agree, "We need someone who isn't prejudiced by old feuds or family ties, someone who can referee things."

"You have our complete support." Eugene agrees with Yvonne like a good little suck-up.

"Now then. We've got a vandalism problem we ought to talk about..." Yvonne steers the conversation away as they lead Jack back to the cars, bemoaning their problem with the little karate choppers.

Gwen puts the signs back into the trunk of Yvonne's Cadillac. Yvonne waves casually to the Scouts and swimmers who are vigorously drying off in the background.

In front of Amity's only Music Store, a battered old pick-up truck pulls in to the curb. Owen crosses silently heading into the music store.

A gently tinkling bell tolls Owen's entrance. Inside the store, a ten-year-old boy is being shown a clarinet. He is playing a mellow low tone, and running "Ode to Joy." Owen looms past him like Neptune rising from the deep, and lets his hand drop on the counter with a slap that sounds like a gun shot. The Shopkeeper leaves the little boy and meets Owen.

"Hello, Mr. Harper." The shopkeeper says nervously.

"Four spools of Number 12 piano wire, Okay? I ordered them." Owen snarls.

"Yes sir, right here. What do those fish do, eat this stuff?" the man tries humour to hide his fear.

"They choke on it." Owen hisses as he snatches up the gleaming wire in his gnarled fist, and drops a bill on the counter.

"Bye now."

No answer from Owen, who stops and stares at the boy. The little kid's music degenerates into a series of uncooperative squeaks and burps, as Owen stares at him. Owen continues out the door, winding his way through the people in the street like some great fish. As he gets up into the cab of his pick-up, its door swings open so we can see a crude stylized shark decorating its side. It slams behind him as Owen gets in and drives away.


	2. gobble gobble chaps 3-4

Chap 3

A fat woman plunges into the ocean. There's enough there to satisfy the most greedy shark. Buoyant, joyful, she splashes away with recklessness. From her, we see other cheerful bathers enjoying that last organized weekend before the season starts in earnest.

A Man and his dog are romping at the water's edge. The Man is throwing a stick out into the surf, the dog, a happy retriever, is bounding into the waves after it.

A Girl and her Boyfriend leave their blanket and run for the water, playing tag, chasing each other, having a wonderful time.

Jack is sitting stiffly in a beach chair, scanning the beach with careful, cautious looks, eyeballing everything that's going on.

Around their particular blanket and umbrella are a number of adults and their kids, the youngsters gathered to celebrate Miller's birthday. Ianto is dishing out ice cream and cake from a cooler chest to the raucous 10-year-olds. Miller's hand is still bandaged.

"Looks like another big season. Gets worse every year." A man says to his wife as they settle on a patch of sand in front of Jack's chair.

"And none of them from the Island." She replies screwing her nose up at the mainlanders "Just a lot of bother."

Jack can hear a shrill scream from the water. He stretches to look past the group, to see what's happening out there.

A lady is disappearing under the water, pulled under the waves by some force. She is shrieking. She pops right up again riding the shoulders of her boyfriend, who pulled her under. She's laughing hysterically. Jack is not amused.

"What?" Jack tries to catch up with the conversation.

"Present company accepted, but off-islanders are a pain in the butt." The man huffs imperiously "Pardon my French."

Ianto captures CJ, and holds him playfully, an example. "What about this kid? What if he were born here. That make him an islander?"

"Just 'cause a cat has kittens in an oven, it don't make them muffins." The man responds and Ianto laughs good naturedly.

"I'm not a muffin! I'm a boy!" CJ declares and Jack ruffles his hair and sets him off to play.

Jonah Bevan walks down from the carpark, and his mother nearby is reading a novel. Jonah is towing a funny rubber raft, and headed for the water.

Jonah! Jonah Bevan! Where do you think you're going?" Mrs Bevan demands and he sighs.

"Water. Just once more, please?" He begs and she puts down the book.

"Let me see your fingers" she relents and he holds out his hands.

"They're beginning to prune." She laughs "10 minutes more."

Jonah starts for the ocean. Behind him, Miller and his gang are also heading for the inviting waves. Jack is watching them go, his spine rigid with tension.

As the boys hit the water, a man nearby is throwing a stick into the waves, his dog swimming after it with excitement.

Out beyond the kids and the dog, the Fat Lady is bobbing around, out way too far, isolated from the other swimmers.

The Bevan boy's legs and arms are kicking and paddling, producing bizarre underwater vibrations, when mixed with the other bathers nearby, of more than passing interest. Dog goes by, dog-paddling along.

Jack is half-rising, looking out over the water. The Fat Lady is not where he remembered her. He scans the water nervously.

"Do you want the boys to come in?" Ianto has noticed his husband's intent gaze, "Honey, if you're worried..."

A Black Object swims across the water. It's the dog, swimming against the surf.

Jack finds the Fat Lady, floating, relaxing. A black object swims up to her. It's not the dog. It rears up out of the water.

It's a man in a black bathing cap. They exchange distant pleasantries, he strokes away.

Jonah, paddling around, making boat sounds, tooting, going "broom, broom."

Michael's trying to salvage a soggy piece of birthday cake, holding it above the water, paddling with his other hand. The bandage has come part way loose, and his cut is trailing in the water.

Ianto is rubbing suntan oil on Jack's back as he nurses the children's towels in his lap, and he is allowing himself to relax part way. The calming touch of lips to the back of his neck as Ianto takes a chance and slides his hand under the towel, inside the loose board shorts and strokes him languidly. Jack sighs and allows himself to lean back into his love's embrace as he parts his legs a little. They would soon have to take this to the life-guard house if Ianto keeps this up.

His eyes still nervously scan the beach in a constant surveillance. Mr. Keisel is coming out of the water, drying off robustly, exclaiming to himself.

"How's the water?" Jack calls out to him and the man shivers.

"Too cold. I'm going in again Labour Day. Hope we get this weather next weekend." Mr Keisel replied as he walks over.

"You're very tense, y'know?" Ianto frowns squeezing tightly as causing Jack to gasp, then he digs his fingernails in.

"Ow." Jack barks, then frowns as he watched Miller, "He's gotta be more careful in the water..."

Ianto turns to look where Jack is watching Miller who has just been drenched. He splashes back. A big water fight ensues, the boys splashing and slapping at the water, shouting battle cries and karate howls. Jonah is paddling around near them, but not involved with them.

The Man with the Dog is whistling into the ocean, looking for his dog.

"Janet! Hey, Janet! Here girl!" the man whistles and calls but there's no answer, no dog in the water.

A huge splash explodes in the water near the gang, an eruption of foam and spray that stops everyone cold for a moment. They stop to see who was responsible.

"Hey, no fair splashing in the eyes!" one demands but before anyone can answer, another kid renews the battle, whooping a karate cry, and slashing at the water with his hand like a little kung-Fu fighter, advancing through the waves.

Miller hits the water, which sprays up suspiciously pink. He stares at it, surprised.

His hands are dripping deep pink, the red matting his hair, running into his eyes. He looks down. The boys are surrounded with a deep pink slick, their little bodies ringed by a spreading stain of blood.

Jack leaps to his feet, nearly knocking Ianto over, and starts for the water.

"What is it...?" Ianto cries, following Jack.

Jack is pelting towards the water. He kicks sand over an annoyed Mrs. Bevan, who looks up, just in time to hear Jack's bellow.

"Miller! Boys! Out of the water. Everybody out of the water!" Jack screams "Miller! Get out!"

His urgency galvanizes the others. Ianto snatches CJ up from where he's been playing in the sand. His sand castle had been stomped on and he is crying into Ianto's chest as he comforts the baby and looks for Jack.

Other parents are calling their kids, hysteria mounting. People rush into the water, dragging their children and families bodily out of the ocean. The first kids coming out of the surf are frantically trying to wash the sticky blood off their bodies. The sight of the red sends the beach into a full panic.

Jack storms into the water, up to his ankles, and suddenly stops, unable to move into deeper water. He is urging Miller out, holding his hands out to his son, who is labouring through the surf towards his dad. He stands there powerless in the water, nervously helping people out of it onto the beach.

As Miller finally runs from the water, Jonah Bevan's raft washes in behind him, ripped in half, the water pink, the foam spreading the stain onto the sand as the wave breaks.

Her voice rising into panic and hysteria, Mrs Bevan panics more with each unanswered cry.

Chap 4

Behind the closed double white front doors of the building, we can hear a rolling boil of agitated conversation. After a beat, they open to reveal Mrs. Bevan looking as though she has been visited by the Devil himself; in effect, she has. Her eyes are puffy and swollen from weeping, her clothing is put on and fastened awkwardly. As she stumbles down the hallway, Owen enters passing without notice; through the doors into the town hall.

A crowd of angry men and women are seated having an impromptu meeting, their voices a babble of confusion. Many of them are gathered around a roughly lettered notice that has been posted on the town's official bulletin board. It reads.

"A $3000 BOUNTY TO THE MAN OR MEN WHO CATCH AND KILL THE 

SHARK THAT KILLED JONAH BEVAN ON SUNDAY, JUNE 29, ON THE 

AMITY TOWN BEACH."

Hartman and Jack are on the outskirts of the crowd, which includes Meadows, some selectmen, and others.

"Look, I've got to talk to her. This isn't a contest we want the whole country entering." Jack muttered as Ianto frantically provided coffee and sandwiches to the growing horde.

"I agree. If she's going to advertise, I wouldn't recommend out-of-town papers. Amity people could take care of this." Hartman bristled as she accepted a china cup from Ianto who smiled back nervously.

"I'm responsible for public safety around here..." Jack began to argue but she cut him off.

"Then go out tomorrow and make sure no one gets hurt." Yvonne snarls then she turns to address the crowd in full "Mayor Mode". "Everybody, could I have your attention? Since this affects all of us, I suggest we move into council chambers, where there's more room..."

The crowd is flowing into the large room. Already in the room is a lone man, standing all the way in the rear, watching everyone as they come in. Against the back wall is a large blackboard used for town business during meetings.

"Well, here we all are; anyone have any special questions?" Yvonne asks as she walks to the front of the room.

"Is that $3000 bounty on the shark in cash or check?" a voice cries out and the room erupts with laughter.

"That's private business between you brave fishermen and Mrs. Bevan." Yvonne smiles and turns to Jack, "Chief?"

"I'd like to tell you what we're doing so far. These are some of the steps I've taken as Chief of Police..." Jack starts to talk but is interrupted by a local store owner.

"What's going on with the beaches, Chief?" the man shouts and the room erupts with shouts and nods.

"I'll get to that in a minute. First, I plan to start our seasonal summer help early, and to use shark spotters on beaches open to the sea. I'd like to remind you that my husband worked at the Oceanic Marine Centre and he has contacted his peers for advice…"

"No need to involve outsiders in our business, Jack." Yvonne snaps with open temper.

"Are you going to close the beaches?" a woman who runs the local B&B cries.

"Yvonne and I have also decided to close the beaches for a short time." Jack answers and the place erupts again as the news is taken badly.

"Only 24 hours!" Yvonne shouts above the din.

"I didn't agree to that!" Jack turns to her with shock.

"That official business could take all summer!" another tourist operator cries.

"Maybe it's better to close." Another retaliates.

Owen just runs his coarse fingernails over the blackboard. He is a small, rough man, a professional fisherman. There of the showman in him, as well as a bit of killer-whale.

"You all know me. You know what I do for a living. I'll go out and get this Bod for you. He's a bad one and it's not like goin' down the pond chasing blue-gills and tommy-cods. This is a fish that can swallow a man whole. A little shakin', a little tenderizing and down ya' go. You gotta get this fellow and get him quick. If you do, it'll bring a lot of tourist business just to see him and you've got your business back on a paying basis." Owen puffs his chest out and looks around the room before continuing.

"A shark of that size is no pleasure and I value my neck at a hell of a lot more'n 3,000 bucks." Owen sniffs, accepting a cup of coffee from Ianto with a raised eyebrow, "I'll find him for three. But I'll kill him for ten."

Once the room calms down after the shouting and pushing at each other, Owen continues to speak.

"The bastard is costing you more'n that every day. Do you wanna stay alive and cough up the ten or play it cheap and be on welfare next winter."

"I'm gonna kill this thing... just a matter of whether I do it now - or at the end of summer." Owen shrugs.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Harper, the committee will take your offer under advisement" Yvonne tries to regain control of the meeting as Owen hands the now empty cup to Ianto with a wink and leaves.

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A book page showing a black and white rendering of eight species of shark. The banner at the top of the page reads: THE KNOWN AND REPUTED MANEATERS.

The pages turn, stops on a grizzly photograph of scar tissue on six former shark victims. More pages flipping - stop.

Photograph of five Ichthyologists posing on wooden stools, framed by the enormous jaws of a prehistoric shark from the family Carcharodon charcharias.

Jack's reading glasses reflect a stack of twelve library books, all on the subject of sharks and shark attacks. The door opens and Ianto enters, quietly, in respect for Jack's mood.

"Can you stand something to eat?" Ianto quietly asks Jack who sighs.

"Love a cup of tea. With lemon." Jack mutters and Ianto walks past where Jack is seated at the table to the window. It is the hour of dusk.

Ianto sits on the table and swings his feet as he invitingly strokes his own groin. Jack grins and absently reaches out to stroke his husband's leg while making eye contact.

"Boys busy?" Jack asks hopefully, if they are busy he might get some busy too.

"Miller loves his birthday present." Ianto says presently and Jack freezes, mid stroke.

"Where is he?" Jack asks slowly.

"He's sitting in it." Ianto huffs with humour.

Jack gets up, concerned, and joins him at the window.

"Honey. He has it tied up to the jetty with a double-knot." Ianto reaches out to stroke Jack's cheek but he moves closer to the window.

Miller is sitting in the boat, with Sean on the dock demanding to be allowed aboard too. Jack opens the window and calls down." Son! - Out of the water now!"

Miller waves enthusiastically, "My boat's neat, dad!"

"I want him out of the ocean." Jack demands as he turns to Ianto.

"It's three feet deep, Jack" Ianto scoffs.

"Miller! Come inside!" Jack is roaring now and Ianto shakes his head at Jack's parenting skills on play.

"It's his birthday present, and you closed the beach, Honey. I told him not to go in the water after what happened yesterday. I don't believe he'll ever do it again." Ianto leans against the table as he watches Jack peer out the window.

"I told him not to go out until he memorized the handbook and the safety regulations, until he was sure of himself..." Jack argues as he nervously shifts his feet.

Ianto's eyes drift down to the open book, which is displaying a reproduction of the famous painting "The Gulf Stream," showing a black fisherman in a small dinghy similar to Miller's being assaulted by the jaws of three man-eating sharks, circling his boat.

"You heard your father! Out right now!" Ianto bellows, now frantic as well.

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Gwen and Ianto are assisting Jack. In the background some workmen are taking down the shutters from a quaint summer cottage. They pause to watch the dying moments of the day.

Three Selectmen also stand watching. One of them seems to be whispering bounty news to three youngish men on a nearby dune.

Selectman Adam and his buddy, Chuck, a professional angler, row towards a tumble-down jetty that leads fifty feet out into the black water.

"You wanna call it a night after here?" Adam rubs his hands together.

"It's only two-thirty. What, are you tired?" Chuck scoffs.

"Yeah, Chuckie, I got my second wind three beers back." Adam laughs as he haul a bloodstained sack from the wheelbarrow, revealing about a hundred feet of coiled dog chain and a large patched inner tube. Chuck takes out a monster hook and together they push the wheelbarrow onto the rickety pier that is only about five feet across.

"Leg of lamb this time?" Adam asks as he looks at the blood dripping.

"Screw lamb - let's shoot the sirloin!" Chuck declares and Adam brays with laughter.

"We're blowin' half you wife's housekeeping on bait" Ada giggles and Chuck laughs along with him.

The splintered pier sways to and fro as the men reach the end and start to work. Chuck baits the hook with a massive chunk of sirloin while Adam secures the loose end of chain to a skinny piling. Charlie then fastens the inner tube to the chain five feet from the end of the hook.

"One more after this, then I'm going home." Adam tells Chuck who asks if it's set.

Adam tugs the chain against the piling to prove that it is. Chuck heaves the bait. Splash! The inner tube follows and both men eagerly watch as it floats seaward, the chain running out from the wheelbarrow.

"Tide's taking it right out." Chuck snorts as he lights his pipe and sits back against a piling. He turns on his transistor radio and loops one end around a broken piling. Adam paces, bored to death.

"You do this all the time, right, Chuck?"

"Twenty years." Chuck answers as he blows smoke into the air.

"I can't believe that people pay money to go fishing. This is really dumb. This isn't even relaxing... it's just boring." Adam stomps.

Suddenly chain is zipping out, faster and faster, as both men straighten with shock.

"Hey! What's this?" Adam splutters.

The chain is coming out so fast that it begins to drag the wheelbarrow to the end of the jetty. A section of chain tangles around the handle and flips the entire machine into the air. Both men watch dumbfounded as the inner tube, racing out to sea in a wake of white water, suddenly dips under.

"Look at him take it!" Chuck crows with glee.

"Do I set the goddam hook?" Adam demands as he watches the chain disappearing.

"Let him do it!" Chuck laughs, "Go-go-go-go-go!"

It is then that the chain whips taut against the narrow pilings. Five decrepi inch pilings SNAP with a resounding CRACK.

The end of the jetty is yanked loose. Adam is flipped like a pancake over the side and into the cold night water, where he manages to grab hold of a splintered piece of wood.

The broken section of jetty, a joined platform of footboards, is being dragged seaward with Chuck sitting dazed on top of it, his lit cigarette still going.

"CHUCK! JUMP!" Adam screams and Chuck rolls into the water, sputters, and turns to watch the raft of wood draw away.

The end of the jetty makes a 180-degree turn and heads back towards Chuck floundering in the water.

"Holy Jesus Christ!" Chuck splutters as he realises his predicament.

Adam steps up on the broken-off piling just to be out of the water.

"Get the hell out!" Adam screams with terror. "Charlie! Swim!"

Chuck, inhaling with terror, trying to slog to shore. The jetty is getting closer. Suddenly, an enormous black fin breaks water like a periscope, making course corrections as it comes for Chuck.

Adam jumps from piling to piling, almost losing his balance on his way to help Chuck who has reached the last upright toward open sea, and his hands clamber for a hold.

The algae is too slippery, and his fingers keep sliding back. That's when the fin behind him seems to reach up to the sky and Chuck manages, with Adam's desperate help, to make it safely to shore. The remains of the pier float belly-up in the inlet.

The harbour board master is sitting on a little canvas folding chair, eating a bowl of Cheerios' with milk and sugar, watching a panorama of incompetence and greed unfold before his old seaman's eyes.

The Amity Pier area is a minor madhouse: out-of-state cars fight with local vehicles for parking space at the foot of the dock, and a parade of bounty-hunting townspeople, islanders, off-islanders, tourist, and others shout and push their way onto the crowded pier, each carrying some bizarre or appropriate tool for the real or imagined capture of an unarmed shark of indeterminate size.

Rods and reels, drop lines, crossbows, slingshots, harpoons, shotguns, rifles, nets and tridents; every fishing supply store and sporting goods house within a hundred miles has been cannibalized to equip this weird array.

Not having room to bring their police vehicle anywhere near this mess, the law enforcement are proceeding on foot into the confusion.

Gwen is laughing as she explains to Jack bout the phone call from Adam and Chuck, "...So then Adam and Chuck sat there trying to catch their breath, and figuring out how to explain to Chuck's wife what happened to her freezer full of meat."

"That wasn't funny." Jack tries to remain serious.

Some of the locals greet Gwen with occasional nods of recognition, or a call "Hi, Gwen," or "Hey, Cooper."

"Mrs. Bevan must've put her ad in Field and Stream." Gwen says with awe at the amount of bodies moving about.

"Looks more like the readers of the National Enquirer." Jack agrees with her. What a mess.

An argument is in progress between an Out-of-Towner and the Boat Rental Man. "You're charging me double the usual rent! I didn't come up here all the way from New Rochelle to be gouged by some Yankee Cracker!"

"Prices go up June First every year." The Rental man snarls back as he notices Jack approaching, "You want a nice cheap, leaky boat, you go down to the Hamptons. Right, Chief?"

Making its way through the channel towards the dock is a sleek, expensive runabout with the name "Fascinatin' Rhythm" on the stern. It's professionally handled, and rumbles in as it coasts in towards the dock area. Some other boats clear the way for it, zig-zagging in the harbour, causing an annoying chop.

Ianto, is manoeuvring the vessel peering through his windscreen at the ragtag collection of seafaring loonies all around him.

Gwen is mediating the argument between the two men, and we can hear a plaintive "But Gwennie," from the local as Jack sees something that makes him move towards the other side of the dock. We see him cross to a little boat built for two or three that is settling low in the water as a seventh man climbs in with his gear.

Hey! You know how many men that's supposed to hold?" He yells as they all turn to stare at him.

"Whatever's safe, right?" one man finally says.

"What you got ain't safe. You take some guys off or you don't go out." Jack demands.

Ianto is gliding into the dockside, and Adam throws him a line to help make fast as he moors. It's a small island of courtesy in an otherwise rude mob. Ianto nods politely as he ties his boat up and steps onto the dock.

"Hello." Ianto greets Adam.

"Hello, back." Adam snarks as he moves past him towards his own boat, the Myfanwy.

Owen's standing near where Jack is finishing after his argument with the men.

Jack approaches Adam. "You going out too, Adam?"

"Might give it a try. That three thousand bounty beats working for a living." Adam scoffs as he looks over at Chuck, "We ready?"

Chuck nods "Yes" and starts to prepare to get under way. They move away from the dock, headed towards the channel and the open sea leaving several others to scamper around the dock looking for another ride.


	3. SLAP chap 5-6

Chap 5

"Is that dynamite?" Jack shouts, and stops by a boat that's about to cast off.

He holds out his hand. "If that's dynamite, give it here, or don't leave port."

"Aw, c'mon, it's just fireworks." The man whines at Jack, "Sharks like fireworks, it attracts them."

"Hand it over." Jack wiggles his fingers and with a curse the man passes Jack a cigar box filled with dynamite sticks.

Jack tucks the dynamite under his arm, and continues down the pier. Ianto is catching up with him.

All around them are two distinctly different breeds; the quiet pros, like Chuck and Adam, in well-worn, comfortable clothes, with efficient, sensible gear, and the unprofessional crazies, with all manner of weapons and unpractical, silly tourist clothing.

Jack is on the phone in the Harbour board Master's shack, talking to his office, trying to get Gwen's attention. He throws a handful of nuts and bolts at the window.

"There's a fantail launch out there that won't make it beyond the breakwater." Ianto calmly informs Jack as he enters the shack.

"You're tellin' me. I swear, this town has gone crazy." Jack sighs to his Husband.

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The Amity Morgue is also the Amity Funeral Home, a Victorian house that normally serves as the community's mortuary. The Coroner, a professional small-town GP, is standing by as Ianto is speaking into a sophisticated cassette recorder with a headpiece that leaves his hands free for measurement with a calibrator or calipers.

Let's show Ianto our accident." Jack demands and with a shrug, the Coroner slides open the drawer.

Ianto is looking down as the drawer slides past him, still matter-of-fact, turning on his recorder.

"Victim one, identified as Mary Andrea, female Caucasian..." The sheet has just been lifted, and Ianto stares down at the lump on the slab. He stops, turns off his recorder as he struggles to maintain his composure.

Rationality wins, and he turns on the recorder again. "...height and weight may only be estimated from partial remains. Torso severed in mid-thorax, eviscerated with no major organs remaining. May I have a drink of water? Right arm severed above the elbow with massive tissue loss from upper musculature. Portions of denuded bone remaining."

Ianto turns to Jack with a frown, "Did you notify the coast guard?"

"No, it was local jurisdiction, Babe." Jack shook his head.

"Left arm, head, shoulders, sternum and portions of ribcage intact." Ianto pauses again as Jack searches his lockets for his cigarettes, "we talked about that! Please don't smoke. With minor post-mortem lacerations and abrasions. Bite marks indicate typical non-frenzy feeding pattern of large squali, possibly carchaninus lonimanus, or isurus glaucas. Gross tissue loss and post-mortem erosion of bite surfaces prevent detailed analysis; however, teeth and jaws of the attacking squali must be considered above average for these waters."

"Did you go out in a boat and look around?" Ianto asks Jack who shrugs.

"No, we just checked the beach" Jack sighs, "Not authorised to use the Police launch for non-rescue purposes."

"It wasn't an 'accident,' it wasn't a boat propeller, or a coral reef, or Jack the Ripper. It was a shark. It was a Boeshane shark."

Down at the dock an ugly, open shark's jaws are still oozing blood and gore as the shark is hoisted up into the air on a hoist dockside, Hartman is seen passing with her secretary and a photographer from the Amity Gazette. A crowd of returning fishermen from the Armada and townspeople are gathering around the fish as it is hoisted tail-up into the classic sports fisherman's trophy shot.

"Ginny, get this out on the state wire to AP and UPI in Boston and New York." Yvonne demands as she looks proudly at the shark, "Have one of them pick it up for the national and call Dave Axelrod in New York and tell him this is from me and he owes me one... let's get a picture."

As she and the photographer turn to mob, we see Jack and Ianto arriving from the morgue. Ianto immediately heads towards the shark, while Jack pauses and we see a look of relief and delight cross his features.

"Well, if one man can catch a fish in 50 days, then I guess 50 of these bozos can catch a fish in one day -beginner's luck." Ianto mutters to Jack before they part company.

"You did it! Did Owen catch this?" Jack laughs as the men clamber to take credit for the catch.

"Okay, everybody, I want to get a picture for the paper - could everyone clear out of the way?" Yvonne claps her hands to arrange the scene.

She continues to call directions and move people out of the way to set up his shot. Ianto is measuring and examining the shark.

"Could you get out of the shot, young man?" Yvonne calls to Ianto who looks up from his squatting position with surprise.

"Who, me? Okay" Ianto moved out of the shot.

The men get Jack to join them in the shot. The whole town and the Armada fishermen all line up in a classic "high school" graduating class shot with the victorious fishermen kneeling in front, and the rest of the Armada and Townspeople arranged behind them. Gwen hold up the "Beach Closed" sign in ironic victory.

Jack turned to speak to the mayor, "Yvonne, if you'd see these clowns leave, you'd never believe they'd come back with anything. But they got him!"

"That's good. That's real good." Yvonne smiles as the camera man continues getting pictures for the paper.

The men who landed the monster are in a tight cluster, debating something with Ianto, who is dwarfed by the big beer bellies and ham-fisted hands all around him. Its probable Jack can't even see him.

"It's a tiger shark. Very rare in these waters, and definitely a man-eater." Ianto was explaining to the men who all look at each other with glee.

Ianto enters the circle, and picks up where he left off, measuring the shark's teeth. Others watch him. Chuck walks over to the shark and punches it.

Jack and Yvonne are walking down to the shark together. "Who's that young man? He was with you the other day as well."

"That's my Ianto, He used to be a specialist for the Oceanographic Institute." Jack answers.

"I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to these men for catching this monster." Yvonne says then frowns as the circle of fishermen, who are surrounding Ianto, raise their voices at him.

"Whadya mean, 'Bite Radius?' What's that?" one of the men snarls at Ianto who holds up his hands in surrender. "Teeth are teeth, right?"

"I didn't say this wasn't the shark, I just said I wasn't sure this was the one" Ianto defends himself.

"What d'ya mean?" Jack joins the conversation and Ianto turns to look at him with gratitude.

"There are hundreds of different kinds of sharks; makos, blues, hammerheads, white-tips... any one of them could've attacked. Look - shark digestion is slow. We could open this one up, and find whatever he's been eating is still inside." Ianto said to Jack, "I've a horrible feeling this might be a Boe Blue."

"That's disgusting! This is the largest, meanest, most vicious shark ever landed off Amity Island, and a known man-eater!" Yvonne argues, pulling herself straighter to show her stance.

"Let's just cut him open and see what's inside" Ianto pats his pockets for his knife.

"Why not, Yvonne? We could get a positive confirmation that way." Jack agrees with his husband.

"Be reasonable, boys" Yvonne begs, "This isn't the time or the place to do some kind of half-assed autopsy on a fish. Boy, do you have all the pictures you need?"

"Plenty." The photographer confirms and Yvonne starts to walk away, then turns to address Jack.

"I am not going to stand here and watch this fish cut open and see the Bevan kid fall out on the dock. Besides..." She indicates Mrs Bevan approaching, dressed in black.

"Captain, I'll take responsibility for this. Boys, cut this ugly sonofabitch down before he stinks up the whole island. Adam, tomorrow you and Chuck take him out and dump him right in the drink."

Mrs Bevan seeks out Jack, and stops in front of him. "Captain Harkness?

He nods, she slaps him full across the face. There is an embarrassed silence. Some people leave. Ianto moves to stand behind his husband.

"My Jonah was a beautiful little boy and you killed him. Did you know that? You knew there was a shark out there. You knew a girl got killed here last week. I just found that out. But you knew. You knew it was dangerous, but you let people go swimming anyway. You knew all those things, and still my boy is dead now and there's nothing you can do about that. My boy is dead. I wanted you to know that." She stops, unable to continue. Her father takes her arm and leads her away, others trail off after her.

"I'm sorry, Jack. She's in a sick, terrible state." Yvonne soothes.

"Look, maybe this is the wrong time to pursue this, but I'm not sure..." Ianto begins but before he can finish, Jack's shoulders slump and he goes slack.

"She's right." Jack whispers and Ianto stops talking as he moves closer to comfort his husband.

"Let's all get out of here, this place stinks." Yvonne screws up her nose and closes the conversation.

"I'm going home." Jack turns and leaves abruptly, surrendering the dock to Yvonne and Ianto, who eye each other with mutual dislike before Ianto turns silently and follows Jack.

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At the Harkness-Jones residence, they have all finished dinner.

Jack's plate is untouched, a meatloaf. His glass, on the other hand, is well used, with the remnants of a stiff scotch and ice. He is staring across the table at the youngest, CJ, who makes a face at him. He makes a face back.

They play this game together for a few minutes.

"C'mere and give Daddy a kiss." Jack asks leaning in for a smooch.

"Why?" CJ asks quietly.

"Because he needs it." Jack sighs and he closes his eyes as CJ gives his Daddy the kiss. Jack shoos him and Miller off as Ianto, who is feeling gradually more left out with each passing moment, gets up abruptly and clears a few dishes. Jack is not letting him into his world for the moment, and it shows.

"Would you like something? Some coffee?" Ianto offers and Jack shakes his head, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

So!" Ianto dead-pans, "How was your day...?

"Swell." Jack answers just as calmly and they exchange a long look that evolves into slightly desperate, but shared laughter.

"Jack. They caught a shark, not the shark. Big difference. I could've proved it this afternoon, by cutting that one open and examining his stomach contents. Also, his bite was too small." Ianto says quietly as he looks at the tablecloth.

"Let's have a drink." Jack extends the bottle to Ianto, who politely accepts a token sip.

"Here's to my husband, the only other rational man on the island." Jack raises his glass. "Your mum asleep yet?"

Jack was referring to Ianto's mother who was visiting for the holidays and Ianto shook his head. He could hear her radio in the next room.

"Why don't we have one more drink, you and I, and then we go down and cut open that old shark and see for sure what's inside him, or not." Jack decides and Ianto tips his head as he ponders the offer.

"Can we do that?" Ianto asks leaning forward to kiss his husband softly.

"I am Chief of Police. I can do anything I want." Jack says airily, "You want to come?"

"I'm flattered you should ask." Ianto flutters his eyelashes and they both snort with laughter.

He gets up and they both start out. Ianto's mother, Ellen watches them go.

 

 

Chap 6

Dark, in a spooky shed, with shadows of boats and strange silhouettes of boat parts and scaffolding. At one end, the large, bulge bulk of the shark's carcass lies on a tarp. A single dark figure is bending over the dead shark.

The large double doors at one end of the shed squeak open, and the Shadowy Figure moves abruptly away from the shark.

The new visitors move into the shed. It is Jack and Ianto, and they are continuing the conversation begun in the car on the way over.

As the Shadowy Figure moves silently into a vantage point against one wall, he passes through the light from a window; it is Owen, and we only see him long enough to recognize him as he backs against the wall.

"...And it was Dartmouth Winter weekend, and Lisa was Homecoming Queen, and I was her date; then she got into the fact that her family had more money than my family, and she was right" Ianto laughs softly, "her great-grandfather was in mining, and my ancestors were Welsh farmers. So we broke up and I went home with some beatnik from Sarah Lawrence. He had lovely legs though. Have I seriously never told you about Lisa?"

"What stinks so bad?" Jack whispers.

Ianto giggles at his husband's stealth and whispers back, "Our friend, the shark."

They bend over the shape like 18th century grave robbers.

"We always had a summer place on the water" Ianto murmured, "Newport, the Vineyard I took you to when we were courting, so I figured I'd major in something I knew about. Oceanography, marine biology. It was that, or design racing yachts like my older brother. Hmmm. He we go. Up the old alimentary canal. Hold the light Cariad."

There are wet slapping squishy noises as Ianto produces a big knife and dips into the shark with a major incision. "We open the abdominal cavity and check the digestive tract. Simple."

From his vantage point, Owen watches, unseen by the two men.

Jack is holding the light, fighting the gag reflex, fascinated by the bizarre ritual. He has never seen Ianto so animated, yet focused.

"What's that?" Jack asks as Ianto pulls something from the incision.

"Half a flounder. Hmmm... a burlap bag... a paint can... aha!"

"What? What?!" Jack is too afraid to look as the light wobbles.

"Just as I thought. He drifted up here with the Gulf Stream, from southern waters." Ianto says, still reaching inside the fish.

"How can you tell?" Jack leans in despite his weak stomach and Ianto grins up at him.

"Florida license plate." Ianto flourishes the number pate at his husband like a fan.

"He ate a car?" Jack says with confusion.

"No," Ianto laughs, "but Tiger sharks are the garbage cans of the ocean. They eat anything. But this one didn't eat any people. There's nothing here..."

Ianto kicks the remains around, "...Nothing."

"What do we do?" Jack asks as he sits back on his heels.

"If you're looking for a shark, you don't look on land. You go out and chum for him." Ianto sighed, knowing his husband's hatred of water.

That had been the sticking point in their early courtship and although Ianto did not regret giving up his beloved ocean for this man, it still annoyed him that Jack refused to even learn how to swim.

"Chum?"

"Only one sure way to find him - offer him a little something to eat. Chum - blood, waste meat, fish, anything. They can sense it miles away. If he's out there, we might be able to get a closer look at him." Ianto informs his husband, checking the time as he recalled the tide table, "It's a good time, too. They're night feeders!"

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Jack as holding on tightly to a handrail of Fascinatin' Rhythm, looking sick and nervous, holding on anxiously as the "Fascinatin' Rhythm" moves slowly ahead trolling at night. His glasses are already flecked with the white salt of dried seawater. He is wearing a life-jacket.

Ianto is at the wheel, a chart spread in front of him, his eyes scanning the sea restlessly, checking the dials and gauges in front of him as well as the electronic depth-finding and "fish-finder" gear mounted in the cockpit. A green glow shines from the instruments on his face. Two closed-circuit TV cameras mounted below the hull flash their pictures onto monitors in the dash.

In the aisle between the seats is a large container filled with unpleasant-looking bait; Ianto is long-lining for signs of shark, and chumming.

"That's the Cape Light" Ianto says pointing at a screen, "We're on the stretch where he's feeding, if he's still here."

Jack is bored, tired, and slightly queasy, trying to concentrate on anything but the motion of the boat. He had thought they might have a nice evening on the water while Ellen babysat but now they were out here he realises that the slap and tickle fest was not a happening deal.

He stares at the sophisticated electronics displays.

"What is all this stuff?" Jack asks," I don't remember you telling me about this shit. No wonder you insisted on sailing her over yourself."

"Depth-finder, fathometer, sonar, closed-circuit TV - fore and aft -RDF, single side band..." Ianto lists off different things then turns to face Jack as he points between them "And two loose nuts behind the wheel."

"Can you tell from that if a big man-eater is around?" Jack asks with awe.

"Sometimes." Ianto shrugs, "Look here - something big, probably a school of mackerel clumped together. And staying right with us."

"It's blipping and peeping." Jack snorted, "Not telling me anything."

He hears something, his eyes widen. It is the thump of something scraping the hull. He turns to Ianto, "Hey!"

Ianto looks up and cuts the wheel hard, as the same time dropping the engines into neutral, and then reverse. The sudden change throws Jack to his knees.

"What the hell?" Jack exclaims as he leans over the side to see what they hit.

What they've just run into was a boat - flooded to the gunwales, loose debris floating around, a tangle of lines and gear looking like floating garbage in the cockpit. Ianto's light sweeps across it.

That's Adam's boat! It's the "Flicka"! Adam? Adam!" Jack shouts across the dark water.

Ianto cuts his engines and drifts in; he scampers out to the bow of his boat and makes a line fast to the Flicka.

The electronic display in the wheelhouse is showing increased activity, but only Jack, who is clinging to a support for dear life, can see the blips and hear the chatter. Ianto is leaning out to look at the Flicka.

Ianto is examining the Flicka, tying a towline to it. His torch light picks its way across the ruined boat. The rail where a cleat once was is broadly mutilated down to the raw timber, and the heady cleat has been torn bodily out of the hull, ripped out screws and all. Ianto notices something and rears back with confusion.

"What happened?" Jack has joined Ianto at the bow, looking at the remains of the boat.

"I want to check something. Hold my feet." Ianto demands as he leans over the side, into the black water. "They must've hit something."

Blip, chatter, blip, chatter. The wheelhouse fills with unheard noise.

Ianto moves to get a better look, the boat rocks in the swell and from his movement, Jack clutches the rail in a death-grip.

Ianto goes below decks, getting into his wet suit, buckling on a weighted belt, holding a mask and hot flashlight.

"Could he be adrift somewhere?" Jack asks as he pulls Ianto close for a good luck kiss and Ianto answers, "He didn't have a dinghy aboard. I'm going down to take a look at his hull."

"Why don't we just tow it in?" Jack whines, trying to keep Ianto safe in his arms.

We will. There's something I've got to find out." Ianto assured him, stealing another kiss.

"Be careful, for god's sake." Jack finally releases him and watched as Ianto takes a last few breaths, orients himself, takes a long, hard look at the quiet, open ocean, and falls into the sea.

Jack is watching the water, trying to follow Ianto's torch movements. Jack is forcing himself to stay at the edge of the boat by sheer willpower and grim determination. He is fascinated by the sea like a bird facing a cobra. He is very much alone. He grasps a flashlight or boathook as a fragile defence against the unknown.

.

Beep, chatter, blip.

.

Ianto descends in a froth of bubbles. Warily he turns a full circle with his spotlight. At first we see nothing out of place about the Flicka except that it is lying so low in the water. But as Ianto swims the bottom looking for damage, he comes across a jagged hole two-thirds of the way forward.

The hole is about the size of a basketball, and the wood around it has been bashed and splintered. Ianto explores the hole with his fingers, then takes the knife from its sheath and begins to dig at something. Whatever it is comes free in his hand. As he studies his find, his light wanders upward, pointing directly into the dark hole. Ianto looks up...

Adam's dead face stares out through the hole in the Flicka, eyes and mouth gaping in frozen horror, his skin pinched like a prune.

Ianto knocks his head in trying to get away, seems to yell through escaping bubbles. His mask fills with water as he flails for the surface. Miscalculating, he bumps into the hull of his own boat, shocked, dismayed, his system jangling with adrenaline shock, his hands open, and the object he pried loose from the hull drifts down and out, falling into the eternity of the ocean bottom. He finally bursts through the surface.

Jack is hauling him back onto the boat. Ianto is gasping for breath, his whole body vibrating with urgency. The salt water in his lungs combines with the adrenaline in his blood to deprive him of speech.

"You all right?" Jack screams with fear at Ianto's unusual behaviour, "baby, you OK?"

A Boeshane White! A Great fucking Boe White, I found a tooth buried in the hull. He must've attacked..." Ianto is still choking as he struggles to speak between breaths, "I knew it... Adam's dead in there. I didn't see the mate..."

"No shark did that to a boat!" Jack whispers as terror grows at the thought of a great alien beast in their waters.

Jack had read the papers, the reports of the mega-sharks that had caused untold havoc and the mere thought of one here was too much, he hugged Ianto to him as he tried to comprehend what must be done.

Ianto, despite his shock and surprise, is strangely elated, almost giddy with the wonder of his discovery. "Jesus Christ! A Great White Boe! Who'd believe it! We're not talking about a shark, we're talking about a Mega-Shark!

Jack sinks weakly into a seat as Ianto kicks the engine in with a roar, and still a-shiver with excitement, turns the boat and its grim tow back to port.

 


	4. Hunting along the beach chap 7-8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 8 is one of my faves ... Ianto rocks!

Chap 7

Next to the "Amity Welcomes You" billboard is a group of selectmen, Yvonne, Doc, Gwen, and another deputy standing by with paint and brushes. Jack's wagon is there, along with a few other cars. Busy late afternoon traffic is starting to pile up as early weekenders and curiosity seekers slow down to see what's happening.

Behind the billboard, Jack and Ianto have gotten Yvonne to one side. They are making a closely reasoned presentation to her.

"There is a kind of shark called a Great White Boeshane Shark that every expert in the Universe agrees is a man-eater." Jack is explaining.

"You're situation here suggests that a Great White Boe has staked out a claim in the waters around Amity Island, and that he will continue to feed here as long as there is food in the water." Ianto cut in with his most serious voice, "This had come from a water world and is able to move from salt to fresh water without a second thought."

"There's no limits to where he can strike, and we've had three attacks and two deaths in the past few days. It happened like this before, in 1916, when a Great White Boe killed five swimmers at Jones Beach, in Long Island." Jack shows Yvonne the report.

"A shark's attack is stimulated by the kind of splashing and activity that occurs whenever humans go swimming - you can't avoid it!" Ianto sighs, "The Boe can smell you from over twenty five miles away."

"A 4th of July beach is like ringing a dinner bell, for Christ sake!" Jack is getting frantic as Yvonne's face remains passive.

"I just pulled a shark tooth the size of a Coke bottle out of the hull of a wrecked boat out there." Ianto matches his husband's mood.

"We towed Adam's boat in, Yvonne; he was dead and his boat was all chewed up." Jack throws his arms into the air with exasperation.

"Is that tooth here? Did anyone see it?" Yvonne demands and Ianto's shoulders slump.

"I don't have it." He says softly.

"He lost it on the way up." Jack defends Ianto.

"What kind of a shark did you say it was?" Yvonne addresses Ianto.

"Boshanian Carcaradon carcharias. A Great White Boe." Ianto looks at Jack and shakes his head.

"Well, I'm not going to commit economic suicide on that flimsy evidence. We depend on the summer people for our lives, and if our beaches are closed, then we're all finished." Yvonne growls, shaking her hair as she shivers at the thought of not being re-elected.

"We have got to close the beaches. We have got to get someone to kill the alien shark, we need non-corrosive mesh netting, and we need scientific support... It's gonna cost money just to keep the nuts out and save what we have." Jack tries again.

"I don't think either of you is familiar with our problems..." Yvonne condescendingly smiles and Ianto bristles.

"I'm familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this thing until it swims up and bites you on the ass! There are only two ways to solve this thing: you can kill it, or you can cut off its food supply..." Ianto is deadly serious and Yvonne can see it.

"That means closing the beaches." Jack grabs for Yvonne's arm with frustration.

"Come here, I want to show you something." Yvonne demands as she leads Jack around to the front of the billboard, on which some smartarses have painted a huge shark fin in the water behind the swimmer, so she looks now like a frantic bather fleeing a pursuing monster.

"Sick vandalism! Brody, that's a deliberate mutilation of a public service message! I want those little paint-happy bastards caught and hung up by their baby Ball Sacks!" she ranted and Jack gaped at her. _She hasn't heard a single word they were trying to tell her._

"That's it! I'm standing here arguing with a girl who can't wait to be a hot lunch." Ianto is astounded and shakes his head at Jack, "Goodbye."

"Wait a minute!" Jack grabs for Ianto, "Baby, I need you."

Ianto sighs, he knows he can't leave Jack hanging. With a frown telling Jack he will owe him big time for this, Ianto tries one more time as he steps over to Yvonne, "Out there is a Perfect Engine, an Alien Eating Machine that is a miracle of evolution - it swims and eats and that's all."

"Look at that! Those proportions are correct." Ianto indicates at the billboard, "I know sharks."

"You'd love to prove that. Getting your name in the International Geographic." Yvonne snorts as she folds her arms defiantly. Ianto starts to laugh softly and turns to jack with a raised eyebrow. _See? Shark Meat!_

"Yvonne, we can re-open the beaches in August." Jack wheedles.

"August! Tomorrow is the 4th of July, and we are going to open for business. It's going to be our best summer in years. If you're so concerned about the beaches, you two, you do whatever you have to, to keep them safe, but with you or without you, the beaches stay open this weekend." Yvonne closes the conversation down with a stamp of her foot and storms back to yell at the others some more.

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Two vast iron doors. Then a crack of vertical light as six burly crewmen muscle them apart. The Amity ferry landing is approaching, people in colourful outfits waiting dockside for the first filled-to-capacity shuttle of the summer a variety of Americans who colonize this resort community for the ninety-day season.

Jack and Ianto are in sweaty, gritty all-out effort to enlist some support.

Ianto, bent over the phone: "I know it's a long weekend, could you get me his home phone number?"

Jack is barking down another phone "You're acting senior officer? Where's Chief Petty Officer Feldman? Where's the Coast Guard Executive Officer?"

"Well then, operator, could you try him in the dining room?" Ianto asks with syrupy sweetness.

"All I get is a recording. Is there some other number I could try...?" Jack sighs.

"When did he check out? Did he leave another phone number?" Ianto looks over at Jack and shrugs to let him know it's a bust.

Jack snarls "How can I reach him in Chambers if he's not in Chambers?"

Finally Jack throws his phone on the table and joins Ianto on the sofa. No words are spoken as Ianto helps relieve Jack of some of his stress, along with his shorts.

Ianto straddles him, impaling himself on the Captain's pole. As Jack grunts and cants his hips, Ianto rides him, whispering endearments and trying desperately to calm Jack down.

Little Karate Hands breaking picket fences go unnoticed. Some local delinquents about 10 or 12 years old, towing behind their bicycles a little dead sand shark with signs: "Amity Monster Shark." "Killed Here." 5 Cents a Hit." Etc.

Jack finally closes his eyes, letting Ianto take him to another place where alien mega sharks aren't going to eat his citizens and the only worry is whether Ellen and the kids are coming back from the store early.

Voices raise as they both shout their release, lips and teeth slamming together.

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.

.

Jack is studying everything, trying to make sure he has it covered as well as possible. He almost doesn't hear the approaching roar of a small helicopter until it settles down behind him, and a Flying Officer gets out, starched, pressed fatigues, a flawless fatigue baseball cap, and slick dark aviator's sunglasses. The Steve Canyon of Amity. He presents Jack with a clipboard.

"Jack Harkness-Jones?" Jack nods, "I'll need your signature here... here... and here."

"What is this?" Jack asks as he flicks the clipboard over.

"Authorization for direct payment of flight expenses not directly connected to a normal mission of this command." Jack doesn't understand and frowns at the man with confusion and the man huffs, "You pay for the gas."

Jack signs. The Officer shakes his head as Jack makes an error. "I signed on the wrong line..."

"Just erase your signature and initial your erasure."

Jack complies, shaking his head. The Officer snaps him a salute, jogs lightly back to his idling copter, buckles in, and gives Jack a "thumbs up" as he lifts off in a flurry of sand and ice-cream wrappers.

And this is it - the Dawn Patrol, the only forces that the frantic phone calling produced. Gwen, and the regular summer extra deputies. The lifeguards. Half a dozen state troopers. Some deputies from neighbouring towns, and a Coast Guard ensign with a handful of regulars in work dungarees.

Some of Ianto's friends from the institute.

The Harkness-Jones', badly in need of sleep, are watching the crew straggle in. Already the first of the holiday beach-goers are piling out of their cars in a brightly coloured cascade of beach balls, umbrellas, blankets, portable bar-b-ques, radios, sun visors, reflectors, rafts, balls, tubes, and newspapers.

Ianto watches one such group: A Family of Ten getting out of a camper-van. He watches in dismay as the family bumbles onto the beach for a day of fun in the sun.

Jack addresses his troops, such as they are.

I want to thank you guys from local agencies for cooperating, and I hope we won't actually be needing your services. But I'm glad to have you here.

Responses are called out like, "Happy to do it," "Any time," "When's lunch?" "I hate holidays," etc.

"I want to get our lines and repellent out, so we better shove off." The coast guard says to Jack then he nods to his men, who head for some

Surf-riding boats and push off into the surf to patrol the swimming areas.

"We're all on one channel, so let's keep radio traffic to a minimum, okay?" Jack clarifies as everyone kind of nods acknowledgment.

"I hope we get some more help." Ianto mutters as he looks over the heads of those milling about.

"I wish it would rain baby..." Jack mutters back.

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.

.

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Ianto is systematically patrolling in his boat. Strategically flanking a three-hundred-yard apron of black repellent are four small watch-boats. A tiny pleasure boat darts around the repellent line. Farther out, crossing back and forth, are patrol boats. To top it all off, a Coast Guard helicopter hovers and patrols three hundred feet above.

"I'm here with Yvonne Hartman, mayor. Ms. Hartman, how about those rumours?" a reporter thrusts a mic under Yvonne's nose as she stands on the boardwalk and she smiles at the camera.

"How about them indeed. I'm pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers here. As you can see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open, and the folks here are having a wonderful time. Amity, y'know, means 'Friendship.'" Yvonne convincingly blows smoke up everyone's arse as she smiles condescendingly.

"Also here today is a Marine Biologist and Research Fellow from the Oceanographic Institute, Ianto Jones. Mr. Jones, what've you heard?" the mic is now thrust under Ianto's chin as he tries to reach across the body of water between the boat and the dock to attach a line.

"Harkness-Jones" He corrects absently, showing it's a normal event "What I've heard and what I've seen are two different things. I believe there is a large Great White Boeshane Shark - Carcharodon Cacharias - in the waters off this very beach, that he has killed and that he will kill again..."

Ianto's voice fades off as the Announcer loses interest and motions for the cameraman to cut.

Yvonne is in her shirtsleeves, having slipped out of her jacket. She mops her brow, and surveys the beachfront. At this moment, there's nobody swimming. She approaches a familiar Selectman, nods hello, and squats beside him on the sand.

"Why don't you get in the water?" she says conversationally.

"I don't want to wash off my suntan lotion. I'll get a burn..." he wines back and her smile fades as she turns to eye ball him.

"Nobody's going in!" she snarls.

On an adjoining blanket, a spirited Joan Rivers type is sitting, watching brightly as her manservant, a polished Jeeves type, prepares some tea from a thermos.

"Is there nobody going in? What a shame. Arthur, should I be going in?" she asks her servant who hesitates for a moment as he pours the tea.

"If you'd like." He puts down the tea service, and leads her towards the water. At the edge of the sea, she stops, and he walks in. "It's very nice. Not too cold... Quite refreshing... Very pleasant..."

He ducks his head under for a final look around. His dripping head rises triumphantly from the surf. "No sharks, m'lady."

She starts into the water, he takes her parasol, escorting her the rest of the way into the ocean.

"This is marvellous! Arthur, I want to come back to this very spot. Will you make a note of where we are?"

Encouraged by the sight of the Woman and Arthur, and quiet urgings, people begin to wander into the surf, a few at first, and then a rush, as people plunge in and begin enjoying the pleasures of ocean bathing. The Selectman goes in, his family follows, and Yvonne watches it all, beaming.

Gwen is on the radio while a Coast Guard spotter works the sonar. "Anything? Thought I saw a shadow. Over."

As before, 400 pairs of enticing, yummy swimmers' legs, kicking like animated hors d'oeuvres.

The copter spotter looks down with naked eye and binoculars. "Nothing from up here, Gwennie. Over."

"False alarm. Must be this glare." Gwen huffs into the talkie.

Jack is walking down the beach, threading his way through the happy hordes. Meadows nods "hello."

"Beautiful day, Cap!" someone calls out and Jack waves as he looks around.

A group of youngsters playing with Miller's dinghy. They are hauling it toward the surf.

"Hey Miller -!" Jack is jogging over and Miller groans. "You're not going to the ocean with that, are you son?"

"I'm all checked out for light surf and look at it." Miller demands pointing at the low swells.

"Do me this favour just once. Use the ponds." Jack pleads as his son pouts.

"Dad, the ponds are for old ladies."

"Just a favour for your old man?" Jack grasps his hands together and Miller frowns. "Ianto would be disappointed if he doesn't get to see your first time in the surf, you know how he loves taking pics of you kids for the album?"

"Sure, Dad." Miller deflates as he knows Jack is right. Wouldn't be a first time without the best cheerleader in the family there.

"Copter to Gwen! Red Four, Red Four!" comes across the talkies and guns are up, heads turning everywhere.

"Where -?" Gwen looks around frantically.

"Went under your - There!" The Coast Guard sonar operator spots it and pales. A slick black dorsal fin the size of a letterbox is slicing a wake toward the swimming area.

"Jesus Christ - Shark!" the talkies burst into life.

 

 

* * *

Chap 8

Rigid and choked, Jack almost breaks the "send" button trying to transmit. "Everybody out! Out of the water, please - leave the water, please"

A lifeguard in a tower behind him begins blowing on his whistle.

Jack begins shouting hysterically." No whistles! No whistles!"

Dozens of paddlers halfway out of the water, turn to see. More whistles, and they start toward shore. We hear panicky voices shouting "Shark," and "Look Out," The loudhailers sounding more urgent now, and a contagious dread seizes one person after another. Entire groups of people begin pulling toward shore, some of them obviously trying to control a growing hysteria in others.

Some pilot boats are converging, heading toward the repellent line as if tracking an underwater shadow. The fin is beyond the repellent cordons and heading into the crowds.

Caught on the other end of the search line, Ianto is wheeling in a broad circle turn, headed back.

People begin screaming. Kids are suddenly divided from their parents. Others seem to forget how to swim. One little girl has her glasses slapped off and she begins to cry in blinded panic. Ellen looks around frantic.

The riflemen in the boats are trying to get a bead, but too many civilians create a hazard. The Coast Guards attempt to sever the repellent cord to gain access to the bathing area and the heaving fin.

Horrified faces watch the scene. Some are stunned and wandering in slow, tentative circles, while others are helped out by friends.

Jack is yelling into his walkie-talkie, someone runs past him to help an old man out of the water.

The monstrous black fin turns a slow circle as two Coast Guardsmen manage to cut their own repellent line. All boats converge on the dynamic fin. Men raise their guns to fire. Others shout commands in a uniquely calculated fashion.

The fin wobbles sideways, revealing for the first time a tiny blue snorkel. Then appears the faces of two youngsters whom we will recall from the coven behind the dune. The fin bobs back, a beaverboard replica attached to a partially submerged surfboard. One youngster looks up and is greeted by rifles and shotguns pointed directly at him. Surrounding him on three sides. Some of the policemen start to lower their guns - struck dumb.

Ianto throttles back suddenly, subsiding into his own wake, his eyes still restlessly searching as he stands heroically at the wheel.

His only choice, the youngster begins to cry - and feebly raises his hands in unconditional surrender.

The narrow estuary leading into the half-mile is rough today.

Two children digging in the sand and unaware of the beach panic one hundred yards away look up, and the little girl points.

A fin the size of a VW is cruising through the narrows and toward the busy pond.

Ianto sees it, and jams his throttle full forward. He steers with one hand, fumbling urgently for his walkie-talkie with the other.

The circle of boats around the little pranksters, the crowds huddled on the beach, Ianto's boat suddenly charging towards the estuary, leaving a huge boiling wake.

Yvonne catches Ianto's boat out of the corner of her eye. Curious, she follows its progress. Its urgency finally communicates itself to Yvonne, who begins a clumsy trot across the dunes towards a rise overlooking the estuary.

She gets there just in time to see the disaster. She watches, helpless, trying to shout, out of breath. Stunned.

Miller is tacking full-sail in his boat with a friend, Kitty.

The fin, huge, black and real, crosses behind them. They are not yet aware. The fin seems to circle and return. It heads toward Miler's boat when another small dinghy gets in its way - a weekend novice just finishing a thermos of coffee when he is "bumped." The entire boat is overturned. Miller sees the fin now as it rams him, the entire bow lifting out of the water and rolling over on the port side.

Miller and Kitty are thrown head first.

Three people in the water come up sputtering, the fin between them crossing back. Miller freezes. The fin comes directly at him, growing into the sky, passing him so close he could touch it, but ignoring him as it follows the flailing and panicked weekend novice. Catches him. Miller witnesses that all too familiar explosion of water - a choked off scream - the head and upper torso of the novice passing Miller rapidly as though being carried off - a current of blood trailing behind.

Miller reaches a shaking hand out to the man who chokes out his words with red water flowing from his mouth "It's no good. I'm dead..."

Someone near Jack screams SHARK! He turns. Oh God! Running through the slogging sand.

Ianto's got the walkie-talkie to his mouth as he wills the boat to go faster, the thought of his baby in the water too much to bear.

"Block the estuary! The estuary!" Ianto screams down the radio and three boats racing to carry out the orders. The black fin re-passing the two children, racing to get out. Ianto reaches the mouth before the others. The fin won't veer off. It smacks into the vessel, bumping it aside. The fin is left racing into open water. Blood trail in its wake, as Ianto grounds his boat at the side of the estuary nearest Miller.

Ianto is leaping over the side, slogging towards Miller.

They are pulling Miller out of the water as Ianto splashes up. Miller is conscious but in shock - his eyes staring at nothing.

"He's in shock. Get blankets!" Ianto screams as he grabs for his boy.

People gather and Jack snatches beach towels out of their hands. They cover Miller and carry him off the beach.

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At the hospital Miller is wheeled out in the bed. His parents are here. CJ is sleepy in Jack's arms. Yvonne is waiting in the hall for news.

"The doctor said its okay - mild shock. He can come home in the morning." A nurse comforts Ianto who hangs onto the side of the bed for grim life.

"Hey, big guy - you want anything from home?" Ianto asks as he brushes the hair off Miller's face.

"My cars. And a comic book." He asks with a yawn.

"Here" Jack hands CJ to Ianto as he spies Yvonne pacing outside the door, "Take him home."

"Home... New York? Wales?" Ianto asks snidely, glaring at the woman waiting outside.

"No. Home here." Jack sighs as he pulls Ianto in for a kiss. "I love you."

Ianto snorts and rolls his eyes as he turns and leaves with CJ already asleep on his shoulder.

Jack storms out to Yvonne who stops pacing as she sees him approaching, "Got a pen on you?"

"Why?" she asks nervously.

"There's only one thing you're good for anymore…" Jack snarls as he pulls papers from his back pocket and unfolds them, "…signing a damn voucher. Here. It's an authorization to employ a contractor."

"I don't know if I can do that without a..." Yvonne whines and Jack interrupts.

"I'm going to hire Owen to kill the fish. I want to see that shark dead." Jack snarls.

"Maybe we can save August..." Yvonne gasps and Jack gives a hollow laugh.

"Forget it. This summer's had it. Next summer's had it. You're the mayor of Shark City. You wanted to keep the beaches open. What happens when the town finds out about that?"

"I was acting in the town's best interests..." Yvonne whines.

"The best interest in this town would be to see that fish belly-up in the water with a hole in his head. You do the right thing. You authorize me." Jack demands slapping his hand on the paper, "Right there. Whatever it costs."

"My kids were on that beach..." Yvonne's eyes widen a she realises, too late, what the danger is.

"Just sign it, Eve." Yvonne shakily signs, and Jack snatches the paper and withdrawals.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Jack and Ianto are approaching Owen's house. They enter through the big wooden doors, into another realm of Hell.

Smoke and steam from two big oil drums sitting over fires fills the air. Owen is grinding pieces of pilot whale into chum. The whale lies bloody on the floor, its ruined carcass adding to the stench of other sharks being boiled in the drums, their tails suspended in the air.

Diesel fumes and decay fill the air, and tools, ropes, broken bits of iron and engine parts litter the floor. Wall hangings of rope and floats, and buoys, barrels, tackle and gear all conspire to frame the killing floor.

"This has got to be one big violation..." Jack grimaces and Ianto looks around with wonder.

"This is quite a place." Ianto answers picking up a gaff hook the size of his head.

"Keep your mitts off my stuff." Owen emerges from the steam and smoke. "Did you bring a cheque?"

"What?" Jack splutters.

"Cash? Or do we do this on a handshake and a promise?" Owen snorts.

"I'm authorized by the township of Amity to hire you as an independent contractor. We'll meet your price.$10,000."

"And my regular daily rate - $200, whether we catch him or not." Owen places his hands on his hips.

"You got it." Jack nods.

"And incidental damages, if any..." Owen continues.

"You got it." Jack barks with his voice rising.

"And you get the Mayor off my back with this zoning crap. Nobody tells me how to run my property."

"You got it." Jack folds his own arms and they stare at each other as Ianto watches the cock measuring contest before him.

"And, uh, a case of apricot brandy and you buy the lunch." Owen is running out of demands and they all see it.

"Two cases. And dinner when you land." Jack grins.

"Try some of this. I made it myself." Owen pours a drink and hands it to Jack who sniffs at it.

"Here's to swimmin' with bowlegged women." Owen chortles as he takes a swig.

"You're going to need an extra hand" Ianto finally speaks and Owen turns to see this new voice, then starts walking towards him.

"This is my husband, Ianto …" Jack begins to talk but Owen waves his hand absently to silence him.

"I know who he is"

"He's from the Oceanographic Institute originally." Jack watches nervously as Owen regards a polite Ianto.

"I've been to sea since I was 12. I've crewed three Trans-pacs…" Ianto starts to say quietly.

"Transplants?" Owen deliberately pretends to misunderstand him but Ianto doesn't blink.

"- and an America's Cup Trials..."

"I'm not talking about day sailing or pleasure boating. I'm talking about working for a living. Sharking." Owen leans into Ianto's face.

"And I'm not talking about hooking some poor dogfish or sand shark. I'm talking about a Great White Boe." Ianto looks down at Owen with a frown of his own.

"Are you now? I know about porkers in the water" Owen throws a shank of rope at Ianto, "Here. Tie me a sheepshank."

Ianto ties the knot effortlessly.

"Let me see your hands" Owen grabs at Ianto's hands, taking them in his own bloody fists, and feels them as he talks.

"Ha. City hands. You been counting money. If you had a $5000 net and $2000 worth of fish in it, and along comes Mr. White B, and makes it look like a kiddy scissors class has gone to work on it and made paper dolls. If you'd ever worked for a living, you'd know what that means."

"Look, I don't need to hear any of this working class hero crap. Some party boat skipper who's killed a few sharks..." Ianto growls as he pulls back his hands with open hostility.

"Hey. Knock it off. I don't want to have to listen to this while we're out there..." Jack commands and Owen stops him with a hand.

"What do you mean 'We...?'" Owen demands

"It's my charter. My party." Jack pouts.

"All right, Commissioner. But when we're on my ship, I am Master, Mate and Pilot. And I want him..." Owen flicks a finger at Ianto who is still glowering from the side "...along for ballast."

"You got it."


	5. Thar she blows! 9-10

Chap 9

The harbour master is helping Owen with loading. He hands Owen the items on his check list as Owen takes them aboard.

"5 lengths of 1/2-inch, 20 number 14's, straight gaff, flying gaffs, tail rope, eye splice, M-1, 20 clips, pliers, irons..." Owen tonelessly reads off a list.

As he talks, we see Ianto coming down to the dock. Wheeling a trolley behind him are two long-haired Research Assistants from the Institute. On the trolley, among other things, is a big shark cage. At dockside, Ianto checks his list, as he signs for his issue.

"Powerhead, CO2 darts, hypo, regulator, tanks, depth gauge, camera, extra magazines, cage..." Ianto reads his own list.

"You got everything you asked for?" one of the assistants asks Ianto who nods.

Hey, Twat! You want to stow this gear or you want me to use it for ballast? It ain't good for much but bait." Owen calls out to Ianto who sighs.

"Hello, Junior. What are you? Some kind of half-assed astronaut?" Owen looks over Ianto's inventory and snorts to himself, "Jesus Christ, when I was a kid, every little squirt wanted to be a harpooner or a sword fisherman. What d'ya have there - a portable shower?"

"Anti-Shark cage." Ianto answers.

"Who's inside, you or the shark?" Owen asks as he tries to read the dimensions.

Ianto indicates "me."

You're in the cage?

(Ianto nods)

The cage is in the water?

(Ianto nods)

The shark is in the water too?

(Ianto nods)

You're in the water with the shark.

Ianto nods. Owen sings "Spanish Ladies" half to himself.

"Comin' aboard..." Ianto says softly to Owen as Jack approaches carrying a little plastic shopping bag, he's wearing shiny new foul weather gear, bundled up, sweaty, uncomfortable.

"Did you take your dramamine?" Ianto calls out and Jack nods.

"Here is the body of Mary Lee. For 15 years she kept her virginity. Not a bad record for this vicinity." Owen recites as he fiddles with the control panel.

There is a sputter and roar as the Torchwood's diesels kick on.

"Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum." Jack says quietly to Ianto who rolls his eyes. "What did you tell the kids?"

"I told them we're going fishing!" They laugh together, and exchange a short, fierce kiss.

"Cast off the bow line! Now your stern!" Owen cries and with its diesels chugging, the Torchwood pulls away from the pier.

Owen has set a course out towards the open sea. He lashes the wheel, and jumps down to address Jack and Ianto, who are standing together in the stern.

"Front-Bow, Back-Stern, Port, Starboard. Aloft, Below. It's not a staircase, it's a ladder, it's not a rope, it's a line, and if you don't get it right..." Owen orders Ianto "I'll throw your ass through that little round window."

He laughs at his joke. This is probably something he tells all his charters. "Cross me, and I'll slap you upside your heads. Now - if you boys are ready - let's go fishin'."

He starts moving gear around, preparing chum barrels, setting hooks, Ianto gives him a hand, Jack stays out of the way.

It is quiet as the vessel drifts along in the current, a wide chum slick spreading behind it.

Jack had snatched a few comforting kisses as they had motored to this spot, Ianto's breathy cries in his ears as he rubbed their groins together a good promise of more to come once they were done here. Jack stands watching his husband as he confidently moves about the boat and swallows down his desire to fuck him against the railing.

Owen spots something in the water - a small blue shark attracted by the chum. He rigs a small pole with a piece of bait, and throws it over the side.

Here's something for you..." Owen chortles as the shark takes the bait, and Owen brutally and efficiently sets the hook, then reels the shark alongside. He hauls it part way out of the water, and sticks it with a gaff.

Gaffed and bleeding, the shark is immobilized by Owen's practiced hands. He takes one of his big knives and poses for a moment beside the struggling fish. "These greedy sons-a-bitches will eat their own guts."

He slices into the shark's underbelly. We hear the sound of entrails plopping into the water. Jack is almost retching, and Ianto is just displeased.

The gutted shark is now swimming in circles biting at its own entrails. Fins closing in on the wounded shark.

"Go ahead, you cannibals. Tell 'em where you got it!" Owen hoots at the water and there is boiling water and the flash of fins and teeth as the local sharks erupt in a feeding frenzy, jaws snapping, blood spewing, and a sudden display of the fury and blind predatory drive of the fearsome species.

"What's that supposed to prove?" Ianto asks quietly.

"Just a little appetizer. I want our porker to know we're serving. I want to put some iron into that big yap" Owen preens and Ianto groans softly as Jack gives in and vomits over the side.

**.**

**.**

**.**

The Torchwood is drifting in neutral. The ocean is like gelatine, the sun sucking heat waves from its surface. Jack at the stern, handkerchief on his head to protect from further sunburn, has been handed the slimiest job on a shark hunt: the ladling out of chum. There are several empty chum barrels.

A flag buoy bobs in the wake of the boat, another waits to be tossed over the side. Jack is reeling with nausea. He opens his overnight kit and takes out a handkerchief and some Old Spice after-shave. He pours the after-shave into the cloth, presses it to his nose. Ianto is also in the stern trying to support his husband.

"Keep that chum line going - we've got five good miles. Don't break it." Owen barks.

"Who's driving the boat?" Jack looks up and squints as Owen is silhouetted in the sun.

"Nobody. We're drifting with the current." Owen explains.

"Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing." Ianto chants as he checks his fish finder.

Hell, in the old days we went out with good charts, good sounding lead, and a damn good compass. Nowadays, these kids are afraid to go out without depth finders, radar, radio, electric toothbrush, every stupid thing..." Owen says to Ianto as he opens a can of beer and drains it in one long pull, crushing the empty and throwing it over the side.

Ianto drains his coffee from a plastic cup, and cracks it in his hand with a silly "plup." He stows the pieces in an empty chum barrel. Owen grins at the display and warms to the guy, just a bit.

"Get a fresh barrel." Owen tells Jack.

Jack goes to untie a fresh barrel, but can't figure out the knots. He finally tugs on a piece of rope, and it all comes loose... barrel, shark cage, and, most important, Ianto's tanks, clattering and rolling on the deck.

"Watch it!" Ianto cries as he catches the tanks with his legs, "Compressed air - you screw around with one of those and Boom! Careful, huh Cariad?"

"Real fine stuff but it won't mean a thing to Mr. Whitey B, of course... he didn't go to schools in electronics. He was born with what he does best. Eat. He's a swimming appetite. 'Course he might eat this stuff, but then I've seen him eat a rocking chair, too." Owen mutters and then says quietly to Jack, "Next time, ask me Cap."

The men are in different positions on the boat. Ianto on the flying bridge. Owen in the stern, Jack hanging over the rail, puking.

Owen takes a wide red strip of whale meat and a contorted squid from the garbage pail, and searches for a hook. He holds up a strip of whale.

"That's pilot whale, isn't it?" Ianto accuses as he points at the bait Owen is feeding onto the hook,

"It ain't a Big Mac." Owen scoffs ad turns to address Jack, "The expert don't approve. What do you think? You're closer to the situation?"

Jack shades his eyes from the sun as Owen baits up. "Why are we way out here, when the shark's back there?"

"'cause this is where he lives." Owen snarls as he readies the line, "You gotta think like they do."

"Easy for you - they got a brain the size of a radish." Ianto mutters from his viewpoint, unheard by the two men.

Owen sits in the fighting chair. He casts off, murmuring as the line feeds out.

"Now if he weren't around, we'd of hooked something else by now, wouldn't we? But he scared 'em all away. Big lonesome son of a bitch..." Owen says to Jack as they watch the line disappear into the blue.

Two hours later and Owen is at ease in his chair, Jack nearby, practicing tying knots. The line starts to move, a few feet at a time; both men watch. Then the line whizzes off the reel. Jack jumps up with excitement. Ianto springs to the deck. Owen puts his hand on the drag and talks to them softly.

"He'll gulp it down now" Owen crows, "Hooooooo!"

Owen tightens the drag and strikes. The line goes whizzing out.

Jack runs to Owen's side. Ianto springs up to the flying bridge.

"You got it?" Jack gasps as fear shines through his excitement.

"Get behind me, dummy!" Owen shouts at Ianto, "Reverse her and turn - he's taking too much line!"

Owen then turns to Jack "Wet my reel, quick!"

Jack goes to get water, the boat surges, he staggers. Jack pours water on the screaming reel, nearly unspooled now.

Ianto is turning the boat around and the line changes direction.

"Starboard, for Chris'sake" Owen screams as he struggles in the chair.

Ianto steers it sharply.

Hey, you! Wifey! Half-speed there..." Owen shouts to Ianto who snorts.

"Aye, Aye SIR." Ianto snaps off a salute and mutters to himself, "Stand by to repel boarders. Poop the mainsail. Argh, Jim Boy. I'm not going to take this abuse for much longer Cap'n!"

Again the line changes direction, down this time.

"Neutral!" Owen barks then to himself he mutters, "Where the hell is he going?"

Owen reeling in like mad. "Oh, this ain't foolin' me -Sure - try it!"

Owen barks off brief instructions to jack as the line rushes out and there is less tension. Owen is horsing up and down, reeling in. "Makin' believe it's easy now."

The line is almost vertical, and Owen shows a hint of bewilderment. He reels in suspiciously.

"Gettin' ready to run again - no?"

"No?"

"What's he playin' here?"

"Put the gloves on!" Owen finally speaks to Jack who has bene watching the one sided conversation with the fish, "Let's see who's gonna tease who now!"

"Let it go, don't waste your time." Ianto calls sown

"Down here, Chickie!" Owen demands and Ianto is rushing down.

"I don't know what it is, but it's not a shark." Ianto tells Jack.

"Look - you may be a big Yahoo in the lab, but out here you're just supercargo, and you'll do as I say, or you can take your gear and backstroke home. Now get down here!" Owen roars as Ianto waves a hand in front of his face to show he already bloody well is.

"The leaders show above the water line." Ianto speaks and Jack is wide-eyed, waiting for that first look.

"The wire's showing!" Ianto informed Owen calmly as Jack has a small fit at the rail.

"Unbuckle me - fast!" Owen barks as he turns to look at Ianto, "Grab the leader. He ain't normal, this one... they never –"

"It's too wild, too erratic. It's a marlin or a stingray. It's a gamefish." Ianto snarls back as he snaps the rope onto the leader and holds on.

"Watch your hands" Owen turns to Jack, "Grab onto this!"

Before he realizes what's happening, Jack is clumsily clutching at the big rod, appalled. Owen rushes away for a flying gaff. He picks one, turns...

That's when the leader lashes free, sending Ianto crashing backward in a serious fall, and the rod whips at Jack's forehead, drawing blood. Owen snatches up the rod and reels in.

The wires have been bitten through.

 

 

 

* * *

Chap 10

"A marlin, or a stingray. Huh. Don't ever tell me my business again. Get back up on the bridge." Owen snarls as he inspects the damaged lie.

"I'm okay..." Ianto tells his husband who is helping him to his feet as he runs his hands over him for reassurance.

Ianto leans in for a kiss and Jack hugs him tightly, regretting the decision to let him come.

"Fasten the pole." Owen demands and Ianto pushes away from Jack's cloying embrace.

"What's the point with hooks and Lines?" Ianto shoots back.

Don't tell me my business! "Owen snarls then points out to sea, "Quarter-mile, that way. Full throttle."

Ianto shakes off his dizziness and obeys. Jack watches Owen rig up a new leader, hook up the same bait.

"How - if they're gonna keep on breaking?" Jack asks as a cool cloth is provided for his forehead along with a soft kiss before Ianto returns to the wheel.

"What I do is trick him to the surface, got that? Then I can jab him, understand?" Owen makes a jabbing motion with his arms as he speaks, "Think I'm gonna haul it in as if he's a catfish, like everyone else does?"

Jack goes inside to inspect his forehead, already healing. A joke in his household, how well he heals. Ianto calls him his very own wolverine. Jack smiles and looks up at the ceiling where his beloved is standing and sends loving thoughts. _When this is over, we are not getting out of bed for a week._

Owen orders Jack back to the chum line and Jack mutters to himself that maybe he should chum for a while. He turns back to tell Owen just that and a noise makes him turn as the huge shark raises its head out of the water. Jack backs away quietly.

Jack backs into the lower wheelhouse where Ianto and Owen are arguing over maps of the area. They both stop talking as Jack hits the back of the room.

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

The two men fly from the wheelhouse onto the deck and look around wildly.

"Over there!" Owen shout pointing and Ianto strains to see.

"What do you see?" Ianto asks with confusion.

"At least you handle the boat all right." Owen lets a compliment escape before he can stop himself, "Stop. Here... Cut the engine."

Ianto cuts the engines as Owen swings nimbly down like a spider monkey. He stands stock still on the main deck, motioning Jack to be quiet.

Then picking up the newly rigged rod, Owen sneaks it over to the chair like they are under surveillance from the "Shark Police CCTV". About to sit down, he freezes. Looking hard at something.

Jack hangs onto the wheel house door staring, eyes widening.

Ianto is moving in, surprised, interested, and fascinated.

They see the shark. First the fin... then the head and upper jaws, ten or twenty yards off the side of the boat. It finally submerges, its tail giving a final slap.

Owen puts his rod away and stares at it. And stares. And stares.

Ianto is the first to break the silence.

"120 feet, if it's an inch..." he gasps at Owen who grins back maniacally.

"125 feet. And thirty tons of him there." He enthuses back at Ianto.

Ianto is nearly beside himself with a strange ecstasy Jack has never seen before as he leaps toward his gear.

"I never saw one that big." Owen breathes with wonder.

"What do we do? Get some help? Radio in?" Jack pleads but Owen ignores him and moves off as Ianto goes into the pilot house, where he swiftly takes out his green case, and opens it to begin to assemble something inside it.

Jack is alone on the deck with Owen. "How're we gonna handle this?"

Ianto is contained in his own excitement. He has finally come up with what he was looking for - an expensive Nikon through which he peers intently at the shark alongside. He is talking half to himself as he fine-tunes the range finder and focus.

He is squeaking and humming in an emotional overload.

"There's a formula! Girth, about, fuck. Oh, they are not going to believe this! - divide by 2000... Thirty tons!" Ianto is gushing with excitement and Owen grins as well, "You're right, you fucker! Thirty tons!"

/

/

/

Owen is assembling the harpoon gun, deftly screwing on the long wooden stock, the heavy steel barrel, and big shaft with the wicked barbs, the frame all rigged with line. Past him, on the deck, we can still see Ianto and Jack embracing as Ianto tries to calm his husband.

The big shark is slicing through the water just below the surface, its fin high, the big grey/blue back glistening, the teeth gleaming.

"Damn it! I need something in the foreground to give it some scale." Ianto cries as he tries to photograph the monster, "Jack! Stand here! No, to your left!"

He is positioning Jack frantically, trying to include him, the shark, and the Torchwood in the same frame. Jack looks back and realises his husband's insane request then leaps towards the wheelhouse with a squeak.

Owen finishes with the gun, and as a final gesture, snaps an explosive cartridge into the breach. He empties the box of cartridges onto the table, snatches up a big handful, and drops them into a pocket, and heads out on deck, bound for the bow pulpit.

Owen appears with the harpoon gun. He throws one end of the line to Ianto. "Here. Rig this to the forward keg up there."

He indicates the barrels on the foredeck. Then he turns and shouts to Jack who is inside the wheelhouse, "Get up there and steer her. Follow my hand, and hold 'er steady. I've got to get a clean shot at that porker's head."

Owen moves up toward the bow, Jack goes up to the flying bridge to take the wheel, Ianto starts for the foredeck, but stops to rummage in his kit, throwing gear around as he desperately hunts for something.

"Hurry up, rig the line!" he shouts at Ianto who finds what he's looking for. A small, powerful strobe unit, waterproofed, a miniature signal beacon. He triggers it, and it begins to pulse with a light we can see even in the sun.

Ianto scampers to the foredeck and begins to rig the light to the first barrel, as the shark begins to surface near the bow.

"Come to port. Watch my hand. Steady now..." Owen warns as he motions at Jack.

He guides Jack with hand signals. Jack tries urgently to get it right, not to over steer, to try to hold the big boat with its throbbing diesels on the course that Owen is indicating. The power of the engines throb through the boat and Jack sees some merit on owning one.

"The line, man, the line!" Owen shouts looking back and seeing it still not ready as Ianto is rigging like crazy.

Jack is steering while Ianto is on the foredeck with the Quint leaning out over the pulpit, the gun at the ready, the shark crossing inexorably in front of them.

Agonizing over his shot as the shark approaches, Owen glances back to see if the line is properly rigged and Ianto is clear of it. "Get clear, damn you!"

"Don't wait for me!" The shark is in position, Ianto shouts, a moment too late. "Clear!"

Owen fires. The harpoon slams into the shark behind his head, half-way along the back in front of the big dorsal fin.

"Jesus H. Christ on a Crutch!" Owen swears as the rope snaps out in a blur of violent motion, Ianto jumps back, and the barrel leaps out of its rack, pulled by the line rigged to the harpoon. It bounds forward and into the sea, past Owen, who is already desperately reloading, mounting another steel shaft. In the distance, the barrel bobs and skips violently in the water, dragged by the shark in his merciless moves.

"Now you've done it, you piss-ant." Owen roars at Ianto who stands there with shock, "Stop and rig a goddam tinker toy to my gear. Let the bastard fight the keg for a while. He can't stay down with that on."

Ianto, furious with himself, runs for the flying bridge to take the helm from Jack ramming the throttle forward as he spins the wheel in a frantic 180 degree turn.

"Rig another keg! I'm bringing her around!" Ianto shouts, his eyes dart about the ocean, looking for the barrel, as he swings the ship around in a violent expression of his own disgust with himself.

"God damn it! We had him!" Ianto screams with anger at Owen, "I'm coming about!"

He spins the wheel again, trying to make the big boat handle like a formula speedster. The decks tip and the rigging sways under the sudden strain. Jack is caught unaware, and tumbles off his feet, sliding across the deck to fetch up against a wall. The M1 Rifle is close to his hand. He stares at it.

Ianto is distressed, intense, trying to find the shark, spinning the wheel, compounding his error, tipping the boat in rolling turns as he crosses his own wake. Owen has turned his back to the sea, and is in the pulpit looking up at Ianto, staring at him, excluding everything else.

As Owen folds his arms and stares at Ianto, they all realize the sun is going down, and it's getting dark.

"Why don't we go in? Get another crack at him tomorrow." Jack says hopefully.

"We got a barrel on him. We can't lose him. We stay out here until we find him." Owen snarks and Ianto throttles back, the roar of the diesels subsides and the boat resumes an even keel, slowly circling the ocean.

"Let's call in - we can radio and have a big boat here in an hour..." Jack is talking to Owen but looking up as his husband strikes the wheel with anger.

"You hired me, remember? It's my $10,000. It's my shark" Owen shrugs.

/

/

/

Throttled back to slow ahead, the boat circles the water endlessly, staying over the shark like an avenging angel. Its running lights gleam in the night, and a glow lights the interior of the pilot house. A bright strobe glints on the water winking once like a firefly.

Down below, Jack has managed to struggle his husband out of his clothes as he fights silently with him. In the gloom of the sleeping quarters Ianto's eyes appear as black as the shark's and Jack snarls as he forces himself on him.

Ianto's eyes close as he gives in, letting Jack vent his frustration of the day while releasing his own, his fingernails gouging into Jack's shoulder blades as he thrusts deeply.

They rock with the boat as Ianto's pants grow to soft cries and Jack's snarls wane to moans.

As they reach their destination, Ianto barks first as he shoots his load between them. The pressure on his now trapped cock releases Jack who screams hoarsely through his own orgasm as he pumps lustily into Ianto.

Owen listens topside and smiles, at least someone is getting something tonight!

/

/

/

The men dress and move up to the wheelhouse, sitting at the table, Owen at the wheel, keeping his eye on the light.

"He's up again." He says softly like the creature might hear them.

He corrects course slightly to keep the barrel buoy in sight.

Ianto is sitting at the table, exhausted. Jack is staring at a couple of open cans of beans or beef stew, or some other crappy rations Owen has on board. Dirty spoons stuck in the open cans show us this has not been a formal dinner. Owen fumbles on the chart shelf and produces some of his home brew.

He takes a pull, and hands it to Ianto, who takes a double.

Jack touches the fresh abrasion on his forehead, where the fishing rod caught him.

Owen bends forward and pulls his hair aside to show something near the crown.

"That's not so bad. Look at this:...St. Paddy's Day in Knocko Nolans, in Boston, where some sunovabitch winged me upside the head with a spittoon."

Jack looks politely. Ianto stirs himself.

"Look here." Ianto pulls up a sleeve, "Steve Kaplan bit me during recess."

Owen is amused. He presents his own formidable forearm.

"Wire burn. Trying to stop a backstay from taking my head off." Owen shows a forearm to Ianto.

"Moray Eel. Bit right through a wet suit." Ianto rolls his sleeve up higher and Owen makes an appreciative noise.

Jack is fascinated. Ianto never talks about his many scars and battle wounds. This is a side he's never seen. Owen and Ianto each take a long pull from the bottle.

"Face and head scars come from amateur amusements in the bar room. This love line here..." Owen moves his head to show a scar behind his ear, "...that's from some crazy Frenchie come after me with a knife. I caught him with a good right hand right in the snot locker and laid him amongst the sweet peas."

"Ever see one like this?" Ianto hauls up his pants leg, revealing a wicked white scar. "Bull shark scraped me while I was taking samples"

"Nothing! A pleasure scar. Look here –"He starts rolling up his own dirty pants leg. "Slammed with a thresher's tail. Look just like somebody caressed me with a nutmeg grater..."

Jack is drawn into their boasting comparisons. He secretly checks his own appendix scar, decides not to enter the contest.

"I'll drink to your leg." Ianto declares seriously as he takes a swig.

"And I'll drink to yours." Owen chortles at his new friend.

They toast each other. Jack looks around, sees the strobe blink once through the darkened window.

"Wait a minute, mate. Look. Just look. Don't touch..." Owen giggles as he starts lowering his pants to reveal a place on one hip where the tissue is scarred and irregular. "...Mako. Fell out of the tail rope and onto the deck. You don't get bitten by one of those bastards but twice - your first and your last."

"I think I can top that, Mister..." Ianto slurs, pulling at his shirt, trying to get it off, but it's tangling its sleeves, and won't come undone. "Gimme a hand, here Cariad. I got something to show you –"

Jack lends a hand. The shirt slips part way off.

"There. Right there." Ianto points to his unblemished chest with a serious frown, "Lisa Hallett. Broke my heart. Let's drink to Lisa Hallett!"

The two men raise their mugs in a toast.

"And here's to the ladies. And here's to their sisters; I'd rather one Miss than a shipload of Misters." Owen slurs. He drinks, Ianto follows with a leer and a wink.

"Look a' that - Bayonet Iwo Jima." Owen bares his belly while Ianto looks blearily down at him.

"C'mon. Middle appendix –"Jack snorts and Owen laughs.

"I almost had 'im." Owen says with a shake of his head.

Ianto is looking at a small white patch on Owen's other forearm. "What's that one, there?"

"Tattoo. Had it taken off." Owen smile fades.

"Don't tell me - 'Death Before Dishonour.' 'Mother.' 'Semper Fi.' Uhhh... 'Don't Tread on Me.'" Ianto chortles, "No, no … All Aboard? C'mon - what?"


	6. Shark frenzy 11-12

Chap 11

'U.S.S Indianapolis.' 1984."

"What's that, a ship?" Jack asks his husband who is openly gaping at Owen.

"You were on the Indianapolis? In '85? Jesus..." Ianto breathes.

Owen remembering. "Yeah. The U.S.S. Indianapolis. June 29th, 1985, three and a half minutes past midnight, two torpedoes from a submarine slammed into our side. Two or three. We was still under sealed orders after deliverin' the bomb...the smart bomb...we was goin' back across the Pacific from Tinian to Leyte. Damn near eleven hundred men went over the side. The life boats was lashed down so tight to make the bomb run we couldn't cut a single one adrift. Not one. And there was no rafts. None. That vessel sank in twelve minutes. Yes, that's all she took. We didn't see the first shark till we'd been in the water about an hour. A thirteen-footer near enough. A blue.

You measure that by judgin' the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... of course the Captain knew...I guess some officers knew... was the bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signals was sent. What the men didn't know was that they wouldn't even list us as overdue for a week. Well, I didn't know that - I wasn't an officer - just as well perhaps. So some of us were dead already - in the water - just hangin' limp in our lifejackets. And several already bleedin'. And the three hundred or so laying on the bottom of the ocean.

As the light went, the sharks came crusin'. We formed tight groups - somewhat like squares in an old battle - You know what I mean - so that when one come close, the man nearest would yell and shout and pound the water and sometimes it worked and the fish turned away, but other times that shark would seem to look right at a man - right into his eyes - and in spite of all shoutin' and poundin' you'd hear that terrible high screamin' and the ocean would go red, then churn up as they ripped him. Then we'd reform our little squares. By the first dawn the sharks had taken more than a hundred. Hard for me to count but more than a hundred. I don't know how many sharks. Maybe a thousand. I do know they averaged six men an hour. All kinds - blues, makos, tigers. All kinds.

Then came the megas. Trey ate the littlies and then with full bellies they began to circle and wait.

In the middle of the second day, some of us started to go crazy from the thirst. One fella cried out he saw a river, another claimed he saw a waterfall, some started to drink the ocean and choked on it, and some left our little groups - our little squares - and swam off alone lookin' for islands and the sharks always took them right away. It was mainly the young fellas that did that - the older ones stayed where they was. That second day - my life jacket rubbed me raw and that was more blood in the water. Oh my. On Thursday morning I bumped up against a friend of mine - Herbie Robinson from Cleveland - a bosun's mate - it seemed he was asleep but when I reached over to wake him, he bobbed in the water and I saw his body upend because he'd been bitten in half beneath the waist. Well Cap, so it went on - bombers high overhead but nobody noticin' us. Yes - suicides, sharks, and all this goin' crazy and dyin' of thirst. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Harkness-Jones, a Lockheed Ventura swung around and came in low. Yes. He did that. Yes, that pilot saw us. And early evenin', a big fat PBY come down out of the sky and began the pickup. That was when I was most frightened of all - while I was waitin' for my turn. Just two and a half hours short of five days and five nights when they got to me and took me up. Eleven hundred of us went into that ocean - A hundred and sixteen got out. Yeah.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

Owen has just finished his story, and is looking across the quiet night sea with the Torchwood slowly circling in the night, the warm light in the wheel house barely revealing the ship's flanks. We hear the distant boom and drawn-out hoot of a whale.

"What the hell?" Jack jumps with fear.

"It's a whale out there." Ianto reaches out to steady his husband with a stroke of fingers along his thigh.

There's a brief, eerie pause. Owen breaks the silence by muttering into song, which he slowly swells. As he sings his favourite song Ianto snorts and changes to another.

"Show me the way to go home... I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went right to my head." Ianto sings and Owen laughs. Gradually, they join in, and the wheelhouse becomes a warm cosy place.

The Torchwood and its song drift in the night. The barrel and strobe light flash up into view, and behind them, the big dorsal fin surfaces, and glides ominously towards the ship.

There is the barest hint of a scraping sound from the hull deep beneath the men. Owen's eyes abruptly narrow as his sensitive ears are the first to hear the abrasion of his ship. Things vibrate on the shelves.

Owen stops singing, Ianto and Jack continue a duet as they k. The scraping repeats, and Ianto now senses it. He drops out of the song, leaving Jack singing solo.

"Start the engines." Owen says softly and Ianto struggles from the table to comply.

As Jack hears this and is about to stop singing, the boat is suddenly bumped from below, and the gentle scraping turns to a violent assault somewhere on the hull of the vessel. Water bubbles up into the hold. Jack starts, and looks at the radio. He is about to move towards it when Owen's urgent instructions stop him.

"He's busting the shaft! Start the pump!" Owen barks.

"Where...?" Jack waits for further instruction.

"The bilge pumps. There" Owen points to a control panel and runs from the wheel house, and runs onto the deck, grabbing his M-1 rifle as he goes. Jack hits a switch and we hear the pumps starting.

Ianto is on the bridge, starting the engines, but the diesels sound wrong.

"Cut the engines!" Owen shouts and Ianto complies with a curse.

"Rudder bearings?" Ianto shouts down at Owen who shrugs back.

The boat is assaulted again. Owen fires over the stern, emptying a clip into the water. Owen shouts at Jack who is still frozen with fear, "Get up forward! Watch for him!"

Jack moves cautiously up to the bow.

"Keep your eyes open, Mr. Harkness-Jones!" Owen shout as Ianto stands ready on the bridge, Owen pacing the stern deck.

"Nobody sleeps! Nobody." Owen snarls as he jams a fresh clip into the M-1. The men scan the seas around them. Owen resumes their song, louder this time, more defiant.

"Show me the way to go home... I'm tired and I want to go to bed." The Harkness-Jones' join in from their respective positions. Singing, the water sparkling towards the horizon, the stars twinkling above. The sound of a distant whale in distant counterpoint.

Jack is at the wheel on the flying bridge, while Ianto and Owen have a hatch up on the stern, and are working together to repair the damaged rudder controls torn loose by the Mega Shark.

Ianto is bucking the steel rod, while Owen is hammering away at the joint, trying to drive a new pin.

The engine is idling. Bits of iron clutter the deck, along with a few rough, outsized tools and greasy rags and gaskets. Hands fossick around to find tools and parts, both men acting independently but for the same goal. Their combined knowledge of boats calming Jack as he watches from his vantage point.

"More left rudder! More! Left hand down now, Cap." Owen shouts and Jack tries to comply.

"Lemme get a better angle on it. Now." Ianto grunts as he adjusts his grip on the crowbar and Owen hammers again.

"He's bent the housing. You can hear it." Owen sighs as he smears more engine grease over his face and Ianto smiles as he gently wipes it away. Surprisingly, Owen leans in and lets him.

The Torchwood's diesels are no longer smooth. Jack suddenly sees something, and points.

The barrel is surfaced directly ahead of them, just off the port side. They are drifting up to it.

"The barrel!" jack shouts down as the strobe light winks at them. Quint holds up a hand: "Quiet!"

Everything stops as they watch the barrel coming slowly up on them.

"It's him." Owen whispered to Ianto with wide eyes. He takes a killing lance from the rack. Ianto gets a boathook.

"He's under the keg. Careful" Owen warns, watching as Ianto leans out gingerly, snagging the barrel with the hook.

It bobs lightly in the water, an innocent bystander. Ianto shifts his pole, takes hold of the rope, poling it in.

"Easy - just want to goose him up. The minute he runs, drop it or you'll lose your hands." Owen grins and Ianto gets the line and starts hauling it up. No resistance.

It comes easily over the side into a coil on the deck. He and Quint exchange looks.

"Here - gimme. I don't see what he's been doin'." Owen mutters, grabbing at the rope which Ianto gives over.

Both men are draped over the side, their chins almost touching the water on the aft side. From the opposite starboard direction, fully unfastened from the barrel, comes the Great White Boe. First the fin, then the conical nose and the upper border of wide, grinning teeth. It knifes through the water in absolute silence, propelling itself with tremendous speed toward the unsuspecting men.

Jack's instincts shine - as does his newly-acquired sense of direction. He shouts as the top of his lungs, "Shark! Starboard!"

They turn just in time, and a long spine-stretch saves them from instant decapitation. The Great White Boe passes them, the harpoon still in its side and trailing five feet of chewed-off cable. It rolls on its side and looks at them as it passes.

Past the stern the huge tail lashes out, ripping the rope out of Owen's hands, shearing a huge swath through the paint, peeling it off like a plane, taking one of the bronze letters out of "Torchwood." The shark begins an arc to sea, its fin cutting the water, and starts circling the boat. Owen notices his cut hand, palm bleeding, realizing how close he came to losing it. Ianto slaps a towel into the hand as he rushes to help.

"Haul in that rope - it'll foul us!" Owen gasps to Ianto then yells up at Jack, "Start the engine!"

The diesels start with a terrible grinding.

"Easy! It'll tear right out!" Owen yells as the engines bang and thump below. Ianto grimaces at him and moves to look into the engine room.

"The shaft is giving." Ianto says mater of factly then shrugs and slams the hatch, kicking the tools to one side, clearing the deck for action once again.

"That's it! Radio in for help!" Jack demands as he looks at his husband's resigned look.

"Shut up! Just pump her out!" Owen snarls, moving over to Ianto to look for the shark.

"Yeah, Captain Ahab, as soon as I make a call." Jack mutters as he shimmies down the Ladder and heads for the radio in the wheel house.

A terrible look of anger comes over Owen's face. He raises up and starts after Jack who disappears into the cabin.

Jack picks up the radio, flicking on knobs and lights on the complex console.

"Beg your pardon" Owen says with syrups sweetness as he struggles into the wheelhouse behind Jack, silhouetted in the hot light of the door, raising his bat. "Duty first and pleasure after"

Looking up in horror, covering his face, Jack can only watch as Owen rings down the bat with all the strength he can summon.

Crash!

Sparks fly, lights blink and go out, plastic and sections of metal ricochet all over the cabin as Owen demolishes the ship-to-shore radio.

Owen takes a happy breath, winks at Jack and hands him the bat. "Excuse me!"

Jack's adrenaline turns his fear into rage. His glasses are cracked or broken by flying pieces of radio. He seizes the bat, and pounds the shattered radio for emphasis.

"Some great idea! Now where are we? Some goddamn skipper you are. You're certifiable, y'know that? You're a real treat! Certifiable! Fucking nuts!" Jack roars but his tirade is interrupted by an urgent bellow from Ianto up top.

Pointing at the fin, Ianto is piloting the boat. "Coming right to us!"

"No - comin' right at us! Slow ahead, he'll hit us head on" Owen encourages Ianto who keeps the boat steady "Slower! Throttle back"

"Hard to port!" Owen barks as he raises the large harpoon gun.

Ianto pulls the boat into a tight turn and Owen has a shot at the upward rolling flank. He sinks it with careful precision.

"Try shakin' that out ya fucker!" Owen crows with glee.

Jack emerges from the cabin as the rope zips overboard, and the barrel, changing over, catapults into the air before plunging into the ocean in a cloudy splash.

"Did you get him in the head?" Jack asks with confusion.

"No! No! No!" Owen frowns at Jack like he's insane, then turns to Ianto "Swing around! After him!"

Ianto can see the fin racing ahead of the barrel. Diving down. Up again - Owen prepares another iron. Jack is digging in his bag. He comes up with his 2" .357 service revolver.

"More gas... go to half! Get me right alongside him" Owen demands as the engine thuds and knocks.

"We can't rev it up this high" Ianto warns and suddenly a barrel gongs into the side of the Torchwood.

"Watch it!" Owen squeaks with surprise.

Ianto skilfully avoids the speeding rope.

"Atta boy!" Owen grins at Ianto with pride, like he's a proud parent then leans to one side, harpoon over his head. The Great White Boe breaks water and...

"Take two, they're small!" Owen crows as he fires another shot, he sinks it deep. We hear shots. As the new rope whips out, Jack can be seen standing on the gunwale, in regulation police combat pistol stance, holding his .357 in both hands, firing at the shark's head.

Owen shakes his head in amused disbelief at this, as the barrel goes over.

"Don't shoot him anymore! He's crazy on his own blood already!" Ianto says to Jack.

"I can't stand here doing nothing!" Jack snaps back angrily at his husband who is uncommonly calm.

"Order in the court!" Owen yells. He has seen the two barrels pop to the surface.

"Three'll do it! He's havin' trouble with two!" Owen yells to them as he swings behind the controls.

"Grab yourselves a couple of poles!" Owen says as he steers "Slow Ahead," engine protesting, as he manoeuvres toward the moving barrels. Owen peers down, steering closer and closer.

"Get ready! Now snag 'em!" he orders and together Ianto and Jack hook a barrel rope and hold on for dear life as the shark changes course.

"Pull in the ropes and tie 'em onto the transom - free ride." Owen yells and they pull in with all they are worth as Owen helps out by wheeling in a circle. He laughs to himself, enjoying the spectacle.

Securing the rope to a cleat but allowing the barrel to hang overboard. Jack ties his now-perfect bowline adjacent cleat.

The boat is jarred violently from side to side as the underwater force of the Great White Boe jerks and heaves them to and fro, up and down, side to side as Ianto and Jack are both torn off their feet as the boat is thrust forward.

Owen sees the fin ahead. It is pulling the boat. "Get tired! That's the idea! Here's a little reverse for you!"

The shark leaps partially out of the water, and the sight is both horrifying and awesome. Its jaws break water, snapping at the ropes that have him caught and frustrated.

Owen throws the Torchwood into neutral and shouts down "Haul in - watch the prop!"

With that, Owen slides down to the bow, putting another shaft onto his gun, finding satisfaction in its heft and balance. The shark can be seen directly ahead, threshing closer.

"Now! Untie 'em! Quick! He'll tear us to pieces." Owen shouts as he fires the gun, and the shark veers downward in a gushing shower of spray.

They are trying to untie from the cleats, but both ropes are stretched too taut. They jump out of the way, Ianto is monetarily caught by Jack's rope and screams with pain as his legs are compacted. Jack struggles to free his husband as they fight for give in the rope, falling flat on the deck as the ropes sweep over them, knocking over objects, skittering across the deck. A tight jerking motion, and the Torchwood is dragged through the water - backwards. And much too fast. Water is splashing up over the transom in its backward wake. The engines groan and complain.

"Damn head is too far away. He's too big." Owen tells himself as he is wrenched to one side, Owen is knocked from his feet.

A moment of slackness, and then a great surge of raw strength. They are being pulled backward and down, great waves washing up over them as Owen struggles towards the ropes with a machete raised high.

The rope snaps the cleats off, screws and splintered wood spraying - and the barrels fly over the water. They disappear beneath the turbulent grey surface.

The three men, breathing heavily, bruised and pouring sweat, look out at the blank water. Jack pulls Ianto into his arms as he checks for injuries and Ianto huffs as he does the same with his own hands brushing Jack's body.

 

 

Chap 12

Pop - pop - pop. One, two, three, the barrels surface - ready for more.

"He can't go so deep. Not with all those on him." Owen says with awe.

Jack looks down at his feet. There is salt water up to their shoe tops.

"What about us?" Jack asks as water laps at his heels.

Owen looks up and considers their next move then addresses Jack's question, "Have to pump her steady, s'all."

The barrels start a wide circle, each cuts through the water, pushing a wave before it and leaving a wake behind.

"Follow him" Owen barks at Ianto and then, motions at Jack, "You start pumpin' out here."

Owen tosses Jack the hand pump, then picks up his M-1, and checks the load.

"Shit! He's heading under" Owen warns Ianto and shakes his head, "No way! He can't!"

The barrels approaching the Torchwood dip below the surface, one two - three.

"Where'd he go?" Jack whines, as he looks around. Ianto is on the flying bridge searching in all directions. Owen is looking more appalled every second.

"He can't stay down with three barrels on him! Where is he?!" Owen shouts to Ianto who looks back with matching despair.

"Have you ever had one do this?" Jack asks and Owen looks at him.

"No!"

Booming thud at the keel. Jack slides on the wet deck and Owen loses his footing, falling into Jack's arms.

It seems the only place out of reach of the shark is where Ianto is, holding the increasingly useless wheel. Owen climbs up, Jack following him, reloading his pistol.

Just then, the barrels pop up ahead, veer left, and duck under. Owen points and demands, "Follow him!"

"He's under!" Ianto warns and Jack sees a flash.

"There!" Jack points and Owen swears.

The barrels have surfaced and we see the monster shadow sliding under the Torchwood, seemingly endless. Violent scraping sounds.

"Is that barrels or his fin?" Ianto cries and Owen looks up at him with horror.

"He's trying to sink us!" Owen whispers as he agrees with Ianto, "Dead astern! Zig-zag!"

Owen is grimly silent. Jack senses that Owen is more than afraid and his husbands grin face tells him they are really in trouble now. His children come to his mind and he wonders if Ianto is thinking of them too. Ianto flips out his wallet and looks at the pictures as he steadies the wheel with one hand and Jack feels a rush of love. _At least we are together._

The Torchwood is taking evasive action. Ianto impressing even Owen with his prowess at the helm, But the three barrels are closing the gap, the engines coughing and missing, destroying themselves with every rotation of the damaged shaft.

"He's chasing us! I don't believe it." Jack whispers.

"Full throttle! To port!"

Ianto is jamming the throttle forward, to hell with the engine, but the engine is pounding and knocking wildly. The barrels circle and move in. Owen has his rifle ready.

"Hold her." Ianto demands, handing over to Jack to grabs the wheel with grim determination.

Ianto leaps to his gear, trying desperately to get his dart gun.

Just then, the shark attacks, breaking water and rising over the boat like a rocket; snout, jaws, pectoral fins, belly, falling sideways. A vast spray drenches the men. Owen fires into the belly, the bullets pocking the smooth whiteness.

"Keep him there! Keep him!" Ianto yells, loading his gun.

The Torchwood shudders from side to side. From Ianto's point of view he can the shark gripping the transom in his jaws, shaking the boat as he saws his massive head from side to side, trying to tear a chunk out of the very hull. Owen has reloaded and is firing into the fish. Jack has a wicked pointed gaff, and is swinging wildly at the snout, gashing and gouging it, trying for the eyes. The killing lust is on all three men.

"Throttling back!" Owen warns as the boat surges, the shark gives a final unbalances wrench, and disengages. The dorsal fin circles off, beginning a wide loop around the boat.

The engine quivers and dies, the boat without power, rolling half awash, a wounded victim.

The fin dips, the barrels follow, the shark disappears beneath the waves. There is complete silence.

In the dead quiet, you can hear the lap of waves against the hull, the hoarse panting breathing of the men, the pings and pops of the cooling, dying engines.

Owen eyes the stern. Huge cracks and broken timber testify to the fury of the attack.

"What can that gun of yours do?" Owen asks Ianto quietly.

"Power head with 200 ccs of strychnine nitrate. If I can hit him. I can kill him. But I have to be close." Ianto answered and rolls his eyes at Jack who is listening "Very close."

"You gotta go in the water" Jack whispers with horrible dread. "No. No, no, I repeat … NO!"

Ianto leads Jack into the wheelhouse and holds him tight. He speaks softly as he promises to be careful, tells him that he loves him and as Jack breaks down he finally tells him to tell the children how dear they are to him.

"I won't let you go." Jack whines, tears flowing as Ianto kisses them away, "I forbid you!"

"You do, do you?" Ianto says with mirth, "Like you said I couldn't get this tattoo?"

Jack snorts, "Yeah, like I said you weren't coming out here!"

"I love you" Ianto murmurs, his hands finding their way into jack's shorts and they quickly remove their shorts, laying them on the table to keep them out of the water. There is no time for sweet words or gentle coaxing, Ianto closes his eyes and buries his face in his arms as he leans onto the table. He can smell Jack in the shorts as he bunches them under his head and Jack enters him as quickly as he can, given the way his hands are shaking.

This is animalistic rutting, snarls and grunts as jack sobs his release into his boneless husband. Ianto sighs his release into the water below and thanks god for this one last moment.

.

.

.

Owen and Ianto are assembling the shark cage, its shiny bars the only undamaged things on deck. Jack is working too, bolting the sections together. If Jack's hands brush over Ianto's occasionally and there is a moment of mutual squeezing, then it's just a coincidence. Really.

"Rig the cable to the roof eyebolts." Ianto orders and Owen is surprised at how quickly he had given command to this man who is showing no fear, only a determination borne of the sea. Owen realises that he likes him.

The men are speaking in near whispers, quiet in the silence that surrounds them. Ianto is in his wet suit looking edible, adjusting weights, mask, tanks, etc. The cage is standing in the stern.

Owen runs a line from the gin pole to the roof section.

Ianto climbs in though the top. "Take me up."

Jack cranks the winch, hoisting cage and Ianto into the air. Owen balances the gin pole lines, Ianto crouching in the cage, examining it for stresses; satisfied, he holds out his hand. Owen grabs it and holds it for a moment, then puts the spear gun into it.

He examines his weapon, checking the power load, with the big wicked-looking syringe head uncapped to reveal its razor point.

"Lower away, Cariad. I love you" he keeps eye contact with Jack until almost waist deep, then turns to Owen, "Try and keep him off me till I'm under."

Ianto inside, looking out the bars of the cage, gives Jack a reassuring smile, then pops his mouthpiece between his teeth and checks his regulator. Jack steps back, and with Owen guiding the cage, begins lowering it off the gin pole boom arm into the sea alongside the boat.

Jack and Ianto stare at each another as their faces pass, Jack whispers to his love as he is sliding down into the cold grey ocean.

As Ianto disappears beneath the surface, Owen and Jack exchange a long look between them. Jack looks away as he struggles to remain his composure, tears running freely now Ianto can't see them.

Submerging. Ianto sees the sky, horizon, water line, clean fresh sea air then... the magnificent innerspaces, with bubbles sparkling in front of him.

As he floats to twenty feet Ianto never stops looking around 360 degrees. He removes the rubber guard from the needle and waits.

Jack and Owen watch from above, the barrels are still circling.

The barrels have come to a stop. Delicately, they change course and meander toward the lowered cage.

Ianto is just now completing a visual sweep and turns, eyes front and he fixes wildly on something monstrous... and fascinating.

The water is clear and shafts of sunlight streak downward in the blue. From the deep gloom - diving slowly, smoothly - comes the shark. It moves with no apparent effort, graceful beyond comparison. As it nears the cage, it turns, and its ghastly length passes right in front of him: first the snout, then the jaw, slack and smiling, then the black eye.

Ianto tentatively reaches out. It is too far for the strychnine pole. The vinyl flesh is pocked with bullet holes, iron scars, gaffing hooks and strange open wounds that tinge the passing currents with pink. This monster is a survivor. Ianto looks up at the hull of the boat and determines that he must be one as well.

The trailing barrels gong and scratch the keel of the Torchwood above. Jack and Owen leap back.

The shark has vanished into a cloud of rising silt. Ianto, expecting the shark to attack out of that same general direction, braces himself, pole extended through the bars, breathing faster, straining his eyes into the gloom and... He never sees that the shark attacking from behind him.

The cage is sent careening. Ianto grabs the bars for dear life. The shark has grabbed the steel struts in its brutal jaws, shaking the cage persistently from side to side, bending the bars like drinking straws. Ianto can't turn the pointed end of the pole around, his body jammed as far away from the non-rational attacker as possible.

Ianto is trapped.

The shark withdraws to get some running room then charges again. The bleeding snout thrust deeper into the yawing bars, the jaws snapping and twisting, two feet from Ianto's torso, the tail thrusting it forward. Hooper drops the strychnine pole between the bars and it tumbles slowly toward rapture depth.

All the shark needs is one more good thrust before separating Ianto at the waistline. Through frantic bubbles Hooper fumbles with the overhead hatch cover, kicking up and out of the cage. The shark backpedals with its tail, but the broad head won't shake loose.

Ianto rushes downwards, after the strychnine pole.

The shark twists free of the cage and arrows downward after Ianto.

Ianto nearly recovers the pole. Again it slips from his frightened grasp and this time disappears into a narrow abyss.

Ianto turns and looks up.

The Great White Boe is lunging at him, twenty feet above.

One of the barrel ropes snakes around the cage rope and pulls taut. Jack and Owen see it and both shout with fear.

Turning to meet the monster which - though held back for a moment by the snarled rope - now surges forward.

The Torchwood is listing dangerously aft, the winch pole bent almost to the breaking point. Jack is in a frenzy trying to haul up the cage. Owen attaches the end of Jack's rope to a hand-winch. The pole is splitting.

"Let go of it!" Owen barks and Jack whimpers.

The pole gives way, the rope whipping down on the gunwale... the pulling of the tonnage below is tipping the Torchwood, dragging it, but Owen won't give up the winch. Jack hauls on the rope barehanded.

Ianto is manoeuvring downward, away from the jaws... Suddenly the crazed shark veers upward for the surface.

The winch is working faster now, Owen demonically winding it in. The crushed cage bangs against the hull then breaks water.

Jack is horrified. The cage is empty!


	7. Boom!

Chap 13

"He's comin' up" Owen screams with horror.

"He's taken him!" Jack sobs as he kneels in the water sloshing about in the boat. Totally bereft.

The shark breaks water right beside the Torchwood, rising with a great whooshing noise. It rises vertically, towering overhead, blocking out the sun. The pectoral fins seem to reach forward. The shark, in all of its monstrous glory, falls onto the stern of the boat with a shattering crash, narrowly missing the two men. It drives the stern underwater, the ocean pours in over the stern. The jaws snap from side to side. Owen flounders backwards away from it.

Jack is clinging to the mast for dear life, as the ship begins to tilt to stern, and everything starts to break loose around him.

The giant jaws are snapping irresistibly at everything: great chunks of wood torn out of the deck and superstructure.

Deck chairs, irons, rope, gear, beer cans, bottles, Jack's bag, all are food for the insatiable Boe blindly churning away.

Owen is clinging next to a rack of lances: he is enraged at this ultimate violation of his territory. He snatches up a lance and hurls himself at the shark with a wordless bellow.

The great head weaves side to side, the deck is at a treacherous incline, slippery with blood and seawater. Owen's footing falters and slips, he stumbles at the Mouth of Hell, the big teeth seize him and snap.

Owen's roar of rage and pain is choked off as his body is clamped between the grinding, sawing teeth, and his head and legs suddenly contort as the shark's teeth meet across his torso. Blood gushes onto the deck. The remnants of his body tumble from the shark's mouth.

Jack sees the horror, hears the screams - in his desperation, he tears loose one of Ianto's remaining air tanks, and hurls it at the monster. It tumbles into the bloody well, wedging between two teeth at the back of the mouth, the thick steel blocking the cruel jaws.

The shark's head shakes even more violently, trying to clear the cold iron, but the tank is in to stay.

To avoid sliding into the jaws, Jack scrambles on the titling deck, bracing himself in the cabin door to avoid pitching down into the bloody mouth. He fights his way into the cabin, already a shambles.

Below him, on the deck, the shark lunges again, shifting weight so that the boat in now stern down, and listing to the side. Water from the sea pours into the cabin.

Another lunge by the shark. The huge snout and jaws slam up against the doorframe, blocking escape, bloody, gnashing.

More seawater. To stay in the cabin is to go down with the ship.

Jack clambers as far from the shark as he can, against the forward wall of the pilothouse. He sees the window Hooper used before. It's blocked by barrels and debris. He breaks the side window highest above the water, edges out onto the battered bridge.

The shark rolls around, now half in the water. The ship is sinking, the sea is not a viable alternative. Jack climbs up into the flying bridge.

The shark is still lunging and snapping. Jack is forced to climb higher and higher as the ship slowly sinks beneath him.

He still tastes Ianto's kiss and as the image of his children fly though his mind he snaps.

He scrambles for his life onto the flying bridge, sees the M-1 stuck there, seizes it.

He is bracing himself, aiming the rifle, taking a bead on the steel tanks, silver gleaming in the bloody shark's mouth.

"Open wide you son-of-a-bitch!"

He fires. And fires. Bullets shatter the shark's teeth, punching holes in the dripping snout.

With a muffled boom, the perfect symmetry of the shark is suddenly blown apart in a geyser of steel and blood as Jack's shot hits the pressurized tank. A 30-foot cloud of water, steel, shark and debris covers the sky.

A gigantic convulsion hurls the Great White Boe's mangled body into the sea. The Torchwood slowly begins to turn over in its death roll.

Emerging from beneath the surface, Ianto raises his mask, spits out his mouthpiece and kicks toward his weeping husband.

Jack is holding onto a cushion, barely afloat, relieved the shark is dead, yet stunned to see Ianto is still alive. The two men share weak laughter, which soon trails off. They finally touch as they stroke each other's face. It's enough.

"Owen...?"

"No baby"

They swim through the debris, using two barrels as floats, as dozens of seagulls feast on shark remains on the surface.

"What day is this?" Jack asks.

"Wednesday... No, it's Tuesday, I think." Ianto pants as he does most of the work.

"Think the tide's with us?" Jack asks plaintively.

"Just keep kicking Hon."

"Y'know, I used to hate the water..."

"I can't imagine why." Ianto deadpans, then they laugh as they make their triumphant way to shore.

**THE END**


End file.
